


No compasses, a thousand signs

by Hoeratius



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Vampire, Enemies to Lovers, Gen, Slow Burn, another slow burn, because they are idiots, because they are:, or lovers to enemies?, time will tell
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-27
Updated: 2020-11-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:15:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 26,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26681230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hoeratius/pseuds/Hoeratius
Summary: Nicolò is a vampire. Yusuf is a vampire hunter. Both of them are tender himbos who meet time and time again without realising that they don't have a very specific 'type' so much as a soulmate. Meanwhile, Andromache the Vampire Hunter and Undead Quýnh know about each other - you would, after centuries of cat-and-mouse games.Hijinks, love, hurt, and hope ensue as the Undead and the Immortals slowly learn from past mistakes.
Relationships: Andy | Andromache of Scythia & Quynh | Noriko, Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Comments: 40
Kudos: 100





	1. Jerusalem, 1099

Nicolò watched, petrified with relief, as burgundy blossomed against the Saracen’s clothes. After a day and a night of fighting and bloodshed and horrors, he didn’t think he could strike another blow. He was done. The city was won, and now this final assailant had been taken care of, and Nicolò could finally, finally, finally get some sleep.

The Saracen stumbled backwards, his face gone pale as his hands clutched at his stomach, coming back dark and glistening. Trembling like a leaf, he sagged against the wall. Soon he’d be just another body littering the streets of Jerusalem, but right now, his eyes bulged with the terror of life.

With his own bloodstained hands, Nicolò pulled down the hood of his chainmail and relished the breeze against his sweaty skin. He breathed in the smoky air of siege. Every inch of his body ached, marred by bruises and cuts and fatigue like never before. He was already more asleep than awake as he wobbled towards the kicked-down door. Somewhere in the distance, a bird greeted the new day with its song.

His duty in Jerusalem was done. He could rest.

Between the screaming, the raging fires, the clanging of swords, he did not hear how the Saracen forced himself upright behind him. He did not register the trembling hands clutching the scimitar. He only realised something was wrong when the footsteps were right behind him, and the sword slit his throat.

Everything went dark after that.

***

When Nicolò woke up, he felt, rather than knew, that something was awfully, horribly wrong. Lying motionless, he listened for a hint of his surroundings: heavy footsteps, whispers in Arabic, something to justify his gut fear. Nothing. He breathed in through his nose. The air smelt of dust, smoke, and blood, like everything in this city. And that final scent of battle, when the bodies had piled up but before they began to rot: excrement.

A twist of his legs, and he realised that it was his own shit he was lying in.

He shuddered, and opened his eyes to a darkened room. His arms protested when he pushed himself up, remembering all too well that he had been wielding a sword for hours. The rest of his body felt no better.

Everything hurt.

He lifted his head to study his environment. White plastered walls, a wooden floor that creaked when he shifted his weight, a bed pushed against the corner. He must have clambered up the stairs after the fight, and been too exhausted to make it to the bed, let alone a latrine. Rising to his feet, flinching at the scent of piss and shit, he walked towards one of the two small, square windows, both covered in blue cloth, and reached to pull the curtain aside.

‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you.’

He spun around like a man possessed, towards the source of the sound. There, in a chair in the farthest, darkest corner, sat a woman. Her full lips turned up in a wry smile as she leaned forward, hands clasped between her knees. With a pang of fear, Nicolò recognised his sword resting against the wall, within her immediate reach.

‘Who are you?’ he asked, in what little Arabic he had picked up over the course of his travels.

‘The inhabitant of the house whose door you so readily broke through,’ she answered in Latin. Unlike any of the other voices he’d heard since leaping over the city walls, the woman betrayed no fear. ‘You can call me Quýnh. Or Mother, I suppose, if you’re that way inclined.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘Mother? Why would I – ’

‘Because I have just given you your second life,’ she said. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t insist on it. Quýnh will do.’

Nicolò rubbed his hand along his throat, remembering the last thing that happened before he woke up here. He expected to find a cut, at least, but his neck seemed to be the only part of him that didn’t ache. ‘There was a man downstairs.’

‘He left. Probably bled out in the streets. You gave him quite a nasty wound.’

‘And then you… You brought me up here?’ It seemed unlikely, if not impossible, for this woman to have carried his unconscious body up the stairs. ‘I thought I…’

‘It wasn’t safe downstairs,’ she said.

‘It was for me. They’re my people, those who run this town now.’ He studied her more closely. She didn’t look like the inhabitants of Judea, with her wide, high cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes. ‘What are you, Saracen, Jew, or Christian?’

‘Let’s not worry about what I am,’ she said. ‘Let’s talk about you. What’s your name, Latin?’

‘That’s none of your business.’

She blinked slowly, the slight movement filled with so much indignation it made him blush. ‘You come into my house, bleed all over my floor, demand to know my religion, and yet your name is none of my business?’

‘Nicolò,’ he said.

‘Nicolò. Well, Nicolò…’ She rose, picking up the sword and drawing figures of eight with it in the air. She carried it like it weighed nothing, more like an extension of her arm than a weapon. ‘Are you a good Christian?’

He raised his chin. He might be covered in my own filth, but still met her gaze with defiance. ‘I am a priest, a shepherd of God’s flock.’

‘So you’ll know all about demons and creatures of the night.’

He did not.

Perhaps she read his ignorance on his face, because she sighed and muttered something in a language he didn’t understand. ‘Nicolò, I have both good and bad for you. The good news is that you’ll live forever, assuming you’re not overly stupid.’ Her eyes slid over him, taking him in from his sweat-crusted hair to his soiled shoes, and she did not need to express her doubts as to his intelligence.

‘What do you mean, I’ll live forever?’ he said, when she opened her mouth to speak again. ‘My immortal soul – ’

‘Is lost, if you ever had one.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘That is the bad news,’ she said. She swallowed, and her features softened as she continued: ‘Our existence is one of eternal night. We cannot walk in the daylight, we cannot enter sacred grounds, we must live in the shadows.’

No wonder this woman lived alone. Someone was suffering from madness, and Nicolò did not have the energy to indulge her. He wanted to find the other Genoese, get something to eat, and wash. Maybe not in that order.

He held out his hand and said, in the most measured tone he could muster: ‘Listen, how about you give me back my sword, and I leave you alone and pretend this never happened?’

Quýnh glanced at the covered window, and then tossed him the sword. It landed between them, the clattering so loud Nicolò twitched like at the start of battle.

‘It’s midday,’ said Quýnh. ‘In Jerusalem. In July. Did you not hear what I said about sunlight?’

‘I know where I am.’ Setting aside his pride, he bent down to retrieve his sword. Just feeling the heft in his hand eased his nerves, and he moved towards the steps that had been hacked out of the wall. Staring back at the strange lady, he remembered the lesson Father Alessandro had pressed upon his heart before he left. _You are there to save them, not to punish. Parcere subiectis_. He had a Christian duty towards her, no matter how inconvenient.

‘Listen, lady -’

‘Quýnh.’

‘Quýnh, I am sorry I broke into your home,’ he said. ‘I understand how frightening this must be for you. If you want to come with me, I can baptise you and break bread with you.’ He smiled at her, feeling the crusted blood on his cheeks break at the unexpected movement.

She leaned against the wall, toying with her necklace as she watched him. Somehow, despite her situation, _she_ seemed to pity _him_. ‘Maybe you should open the window first. See what happens.’

‘All right then.’ Still smiling to show that he meant her no harm even with his sword by his side, he walked over to the window. A sliver of sunlight slipped past the edge of the curtain, and he hooked his finger around it to slide open –

Fire slithered over his skin.

With an anguished cry, Nicolò snatched back his hand, staring at the tips of his fingers, which blistered with angry, red welts as if he had thrown his hand into a smith’s flames. He pressed his other wrist against his mouth to stifle his groans, and turned around to stare at Quýnh.

‘What is going on?’ he asked. He sniffed the air, but the smoke and ashes weren’t fresh. The pain he felt did not come from the blazing destruction of Jerusalem just outside this calm room. There was no scorching heat, no black clouds, so what had…?

He flexed the fingers of his injured hand, wondering if he had hallucinated it, but the slightest movement sent arrows of pain.

‘I told you,’ said Quýnh. ‘The sunlight burns us.’

‘Who is this “us” you talk about? Not you and me. Ah, _cazzo_ ,’ he groaned, clenching his eyes shut. ‘That wasn’t the sun that did that.’

She didn’t even acknowledge that. ‘We are the Immortals. We can give eternal life, but only in the shadows. I – I gave it to you.’

‘Only God can bestow eternity.’

‘You are a good Christian.’ She said it with a smile, at odds with her frown, with the tension around her eyes. ‘Or at least a dogmatic one. I did it to save you. You were dying downstairs, choking on your own blood, and…’

He shook his head. With his left hand, he pointed his sword at her, but he lacked the training and skill to hold it without it trembling. ‘You can’t save me. If I had been dying –’ Which he hadn’t, not even if he recalled the thick, warm liquid clogging up his throat with sudden, dreadful clarity, but he hadn’t died, because he was here, ‘– God and His mercy would be responsible for saving me. Not some… Not some foreign…’

‘I was starving,’ she said, before he could throw out a word unsuited to a lady’s company. ‘I couldn’t not –’

‘You couldn’t not what?’

‘I couldn’t let your blood go to waste.’

He dropped the sword. It told of his bafflement as eloquently as any expletive might have.

‘We Immortals, we don’t live off bread and honey. We require human blood to maintain our strength, and with the night curfew of the last few weeks and then battle and the sun rising and your blood flowing like a fountain…’ she said pleadingly, as if any of this made any sense, as if it made anything clearer. Quýnh continued, ‘I had to drink it. And then you were so close to death and… and I thought I might be allowed to save you. Our venom works as a healing salve.’

He brushed his fingers over his Adam’s apple, feeling a thin line of rough skin that crept messily from his right ear to just below his left jaw. It felt cool to the touch, and as he pressed his fingers under his chin, he realised something was missing.

Quýnh watched him in silence as he tried with his healthy fingertips, with his whole hand, clutched at his wrist throat and wrist and chest, but it wasn’t there. His pulse had gone.

Not giving her another glance, Nicolò raised his injured hand, looking at the blisters. Swallowing away his nerves, he brought the tarnished skin to his mouth and licked, and then nearly fainted from pain.

‘ _Cazzo, cazzo, cazzo_ ,’ he groaned, biting down on his left fist. When the world had stopped spinning, he cast his eyes over his right hand: his forefinger glistened with a hint of saliva, but the skin was turning from rust-coloured to red until it had gone back to the same tanned, pinkish colour of his other hand.

He slowly raised his head, looking at Quýnh with more fear than he had ever felt before in his life. Or death.

She nodded slowly, awkwardly, going on for far longer than needed. The silence stretched on between them for long enough that Nicolò noticed that neither she nor he was breathing. Eventually, Quýnh did inhale, and exhaled with the most faux-casual tone Nicolò had ever heard: ‘So, um, since we’re stuck inside for the next couple of hours, do you have any questions?’

 _Cazzo_ indeed.


	2. Baghdad, 1108

Normally, Yusuf loved Baghdad. In the constant flux of merchants and scholars and soldiers and hopefuls, it was easy to fade away. He remembered fondly the anonymity on one of his first trips with his father, where they had got lost amongst the thousands. Now, however, the city’s streets and markets further complicated what had already been a difficult six months.

Did it mean something, the woman he’d been seeing in his dreams for the last decade? Was it a sign that he’d recognised Al-Kadhimiya Mosque behind her one night? Or was all this just another flight of his imagination?

He roamed the streets, scanning each passer-by, searching for the striking green eyes.

In the end, the eyes found him first.

He’d picked up some _lauzinaq_ from a street vendor, his guard let down for just a second by the almond sweetness. Before he knew it, a hand had grabbed him by the back of his robes and dragged him into an alley with such force that he dropped the pastry.

He reached for his grandfather’s dagger, but his assailant had already snatched it from him and hidden it in the folds of her dress, as she pressed down on his mouth with her other hand.

‘Don’t scream,’ she said.

He held up his hands in assent, glancing to his left, where the white light of the market promised safety and protection. It failed to reach far into the alley, and the woman’s face might as well have been wrapped in dusk.

Staring at him through narrowed eyes, she slowly removed her hand, stepping back as far as she could before hitting the wall. Yusuf coughed, slapping himself on the chest until the honey-soaked almond lodged in his windpipe came back up.

‘Was that necessary?’ he asked, taking his first proper, deep breath. ‘I would’ve come if you’d just asked.’

‘You never know,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

‘Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad al-Kaysani. Yours?’

She hesitated, and he could tell she was wondering whether to tell him the truth. In the end, she said: ‘Andromache of Scythia.’

‘You are far from home,’ he said.

‘As are you. I’ve been waiting for you.’

Well, at least he hadn’t completely made her up. She recognised him as well, and without asking, he knew it was from her dreams. Yet something about her told him that she knew far more than he did.

She assessed him, and for the first time he could study her in more detail than the flashes of his dreams. Tall, tanned, stunning, radiating terrifying knowledge and power, she was unlike anyone he’d ever met. He felt like an infant in comparison, a sense that only lifted when she smiled and a twinkle in her eyes told him she, too, was glad they had met.

She looked down at the splattered _lauzinaq_ at the end of the alley, the pastry flakes having left tiny trails in the dusty ground. ‘I’m sorry about your snack. Come, I’ll buy you another and we can talk.’

They emerged onto the market. Yusuf could not tear his eyes away from her, as much from a lingering fear for her as a person as for the possibility that she might leave.

Andromache greeted the same salesman Yusuf had bought his original _lauzinaq_ from, speaking in quick if interestingly accented Arabic as she handed him a kerchief. Even before she’d made her request, the merchant selected a variety of sweets and pastries. ‘These are new, you’ll love them,’ he said, as he held up a golden bite sprinkled with crushed pistachios. Yusuf found his mouth watering, and was more than a little put out when Andromache handed him only one of the dozen or so snacks she’d bought.

‘I have a problem,’ she said simply, as she took a bite of the pistachio’d goodness. ‘Oh, this is good.’

‘You two seemed familiar,’ said Yusuf, wondering if he should have dreamt about the merchant, too.

‘I’m a simple woman at heart. I see a nuts-and-honey-based cake, I like it. Well, I say I’m a simple woman…’ She urged him towards a fountain and sat down on the ridge. Yusuf stayed just on the side, eating his pastry with a level of hesitation that would have gravely insulted the salesman, had he known.

Andromache raised one eyebrow. ‘You’re going to want to sit down for this, Yusuf, son of Ibrahim. I’ll give you one of these if you do,’ she added, holding up what little was left of her pistachio cake.

Yusuf did as he was told, and Andromache delivered on her promise. Plucking at individual leaves of pastry, he waited until she explained why she was here, why he was here, what they were doing in each other’s’ dreams, and anything else she might consider useful.

‘So,’ Andromache said. ‘You came back from the dead.’

He nodded, glad that that suspicion was out of the way. ‘You, too?’

‘Quite a few by now.’

‘A few?’ he echoed.

‘So you’re still on one?’ She chewed thoughtfully, the implication of her words not lost on Yusuf.

Not that it surprised him, as such – there had always been that possibility now that his wounds grew closed the moment he got them. He just hadn’t gone too far in his testing. ‘How long have you…?’

‘It’s rude to ask a woman her age,’ she said with a grin. ‘I’d say “forever” but you might think I meant it. A few thousand years. Centuries blend into each other after a while. Where was your first?’

‘Jerusalem.’ And a miserable time it had been, too. He still remembered the cold that crept into his fingertips, even as he managed to kill the Frank that had mortally wounded him. The surge of victory faded quickly, however, as he’d stumbled outside looking for help, finding none, and eventually passed out. Would not recommend, would not do again, did not want to share with a stranger at a fountain. ‘Siege of the Cross-bearers.’

She winced on his behalf. ‘Grim.’

‘Tell me about it. I was only supposed to be there for a fortnight, staying with some family friends. And now…’ He stuffed the pastry in his mouth, glad for the distraction of its sweetness. Andromache was right: this was good. Almost worth coming back from the dead for, if only not to have missed it. ‘So you’re like me?’

‘Yup.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘Not anymore.’

He choked on his comfort, and she rushed to add, ‘That I know of.’

‘But there were?’

‘He died a while ago,’ she said.

Wondering what ‘a while’ meant for someone who summarised millennia like months, Yusuf decided that perhaps he’d rather not know. Nothing about Andromache hinted at an incredibly ripe old age, but then what would, other than dusted bones?

‘So, why are we like this?’ he asked.

‘That is a good question.’

Silence. She stared at him as she chewed, and he knew that part of her was enjoying leaving him hanging. At least she opened the kerchief to offer him another snack, even if his teeth felt furry with honey and sugar already.

‘Yes…?’ he prompted.

‘Well, I don’t know for sure,’ she said. ‘But I’ll tell you a few things I do know. One: we are not the only immortal creatures out there. There are others, I call them the Undead, walking corpses that feed on human blood. Which brings me to my second point: none of us are _immortal_ immortal. We can be killed by their venom. And they can be killed in a variety of ways.’

_Immortal_. He hadn’t wanted to think the word, impossible as it sounded even unspoken, but Andromache dropped it like it was on her list of groceries. After thousands of years, even the impossible became commonplace, he guessed.

‘So you think we’re like this to hunt them?’ he asked.

‘To protect humanity. And they are one of the biggest threats.’ For the first time since they’d sat down, she didn’t reach for another pastry, staring off into the distance. ‘They – like us – used to be normal humans, but they can change their victims. If they drink someone’s blood to the point of death and then heal them, the other person becomes like them. But that’s not the only fight,’ she said, almost as if to reassure him that normal bloodshed lay ahead as well. ‘We don’t die. It gives us a certain privilege when it comes to fighting for what we believe in.’

Yusuf rose from the fountain. ‘Maybe I don’t want to fight to the death.’

‘Don’t you?’

‘I’ve seen what it does,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘People who think they know what’s right. It’s still carnage. I’m not a warrior, Andromache of Scythia. I’m a poet. A merchant. A coward, if that’s what you want to call me. But…’

She cocked her head, breathing deeply as she studied him. ‘I don’t think you’re a coward at all, Yusuf al-Kaysani.’

‘Not even if I refuse to join your band of – of – of Undead Hunters?’

‘You won’t,’ she said. ‘Yusuf, you are immortal. You and your love of poetry won’t die, but your family will. Your friends will. In the end, all that is left is the hope that you can leave the world a slightly better place. Sometimes – often – that is through violence, protecting those that can’t defend themselves. It’s a gift. A horrible, terrifying, priceless gift that you can’t give back.’

‘Unless an Undead bites me. An Undead.’ The word started spinning, the pastries suddenly heavy and unwelcome in his stomach. Without saying anything, Andromache placed a hand on his back and urged him forward, so his head rested between his knees. Sharp, panicked breaths tore through Yusuf’s throat as the implication of everything Andromache suggested rained down on him.

Thousands of years to wander the earth without his family, without a path, without a destination…

No, he could not think about this. He could not. Not in public. His fingers dug into his arms, the gentle inconvenience of the pressure anchoring him to this moment. First things first.

‘These Undead you say we need to hunt,’ he said, measuring out every syllable so as not to worry about what they meant put together, ‘how do you recognise them? If they used to be mortals, like us…’

She rubbed soothing circles onto his back. ‘Gut feeling. When we’re near them, our senses go nuts. Heightened sight, smell, and this pressure inside your chest… You’ll know it when it hits you.’

‘But they look like normal humans?’

‘Paler, usually. They can’t go out into the sunlight,’ she said. When he looked up from his lap, she continued, ‘No sunlight, no sacred spaces, no homes they haven’t been invited to. They don’t have a reflection either, and silver…’ She looked at the rings around his fingers, ‘Silver burns them.’

The list of facts, however absurd, calmed Yusuf down. ‘All right. And you said something about… how to kill them?’

‘Sunlight. Wooden stake through the heart. Decapitation.’ She listed them like ingredients for a good cake. ‘Fire works pretty well. Basically, most things that would kill a normal person, except for old age and things like drowning. They don’t breathe,’ she explained, before he could ask. ‘Some people think they can’t cross running water, but unfortunately that’s folklore. Not needing to breathe means they’re actually excellent swimmers.’

He forced himself not to process any of it. Now was a time to listen, later he would think. ‘And you said they feed on human blood?’

‘Often until the body is fully drained.’ Andromache clenched her jaw, and he wondered how many bloodless bodies she had come across in her lifetime. ‘But they don’t have to kill their victims.’

She rose from the edge of the fountain, brushing the flakes and crumbs off her dress. ‘Come, I’ll show you my weapons. We’d better start your training, considering the plans for tonight.’

Yusuf sat, frozen. ‘And what plans are those?’

‘With some luck, your first Undead kill.’


	3. Sevilla, 1189

Nicolò missed three things about mortality:

  1. Sunlight;
  2. His family, especially his nephew Mattia, who’d seen it as his personal mission to ensure Nicolò was climbed upon the moment the two were in the same room together;
  3. Food.



Since it had been the better part of a century since he had enjoyed any of them, he should have known that a return to that kind of existence would present more challenges now than it had when he’d been a strapping young priest.

As he squashed pine nuts in the mortar he’d borrowed from the neighbours, he remembered the sacks of flour in their family kitchen, the selection of pots and pans kept spotless by the servants, not to mention the fresh milk from their goat (also named Nicolò by his hilarious brother). Now the creation of a meal as simple as pesto became a constant reminder of the sheer amount of stuff his mother had had. Parmesan, pecorino, herbs, salt, surfaces, implements, all of which he’d had to pull together over the last few days as, halfway through the preparation, he remembered yet another crucial factor missing.

Tonight, though, he had everything. He stirred the water filled with his _trofie_ , breathed in deeply. He might not be able to taste anything (he’d found out the hard and vomit-heavy way what happened when human food reached his stomach), but the smells were just like they used to be.

Quýnh rested her head on his shoulder and stared at the chopping board with a mixture of confusion and distaste. ‘Not to put down your cooking skills, Nico, but you do realise we don’t eat?’

‘It’s not for us,’ he said, trying and failing to keep a smile from his voice.

Her sigh revealed she’d feared as much. ‘Are you coming hunting with me tonight?’

‘I had enough yesterday.’

It had been a pain, finding enough victims to sate him without pushing any of them so far that they’d suffer serious health consequences, but it set him up for the next few nights.

‘So what are you doing tonight then?’ said Quýnh.

‘There’s a poetry reading I thought I might attend.’

‘Didn’t know you had an ear for that kind of stuff.’

He avoided her gaze as he lifted a _strofia_ from the boiling water: perfect thickness. The white curtains blazed red and orange, announcing the start of evening: perfect timing. He ran his hand over his cheek: perfect shave.

Quýnh folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘Is it that poet, or someone else?’

‘Um…’

‘I suppose that doesn’t matter. Nico - Nico, _look_ at me,’ she said, tugging at his arm. He followed her order hesitantly, like a child that knows the rain has ruined his name day celebrations but still hopes that not saying the words might make the disappointment disappear.

‘Do you intend to change him?’ asked Quýnh.

‘What?’ he asked. He’d expected a scolding - _don’t spend too much time around the mortals, don’t get attached, don’t let any of them see you hunting_ \- as he had got occasionally since he and Quýnh began travelling together. This final option, of changing a human, had not even occurred to him. ‘I can do that?’

‘You wouldn’t be the first.’

‘I thought someone had to be dying for… Oh.’ He nodded slowly. Had his heart still beaten, it would have clenched tightly in his chest at the realisation.

It wouldn’t be difficult. It didn’t have to be violent. He could lure Yusuf in, bite him, _taste_ him, and not stop until…

‘I couldn’t,’ he said, thinking of the twinkle in Yusuf’s eyes whenever he glanced at Nicolò from across the crowd. That was a twinkle of the living. It did not suit the Undead. ‘I couldn’t. I think.’

Quýnh rubbed her hand along his arm, gentle like a mother. ‘You don’t have to decide now. But if you’re cooking for him… It will hurt less if we leave now, before he becomes part of you. I’ll be around the palace, if… you need any help.’

She adjusted the fillet around her forehead, and Nicolò reached out to straighten her veils. After so many years of pretending to be married, he no longer felt the need to avert his eyes around a woman’s toilette. Or at least not Quýnh’s. He wasn’t sure what he’d do around any other woman.

‘How do I look?’ she asked.

‘To die for.’

She smiled at him, both in goodbye and reassurance. Whatever he decided tonight, she would support him, but when she squeezed his fingers, he knew what she thought would happen. As she left and he finished the meal, he wondered how many times she had been in his situation. And yet, she had been alone when she changed him.

He stared at the pasta. It did not give him any answers.

As he stepped outside, the tips of the bathhouse rose stark against the remaining daylight. Nicolò watched the final rays of sun, safe in the shade of their home, while around him Sevilla came to life. Night in the Andalusian summer was not preserved for the Undead. The shimmering heat kept everyone inside until evening at least, when Nicolò could mingle with humans like he was one of them.

The sun slid down further, until only the slightest hint of light blue embraced the silhouette of the city. Nicolò nodded in greeting to one of his neighbours, closed the door, and set off for the gardens.

As ever, he arrived slightly late (‘at dusk’ was a difficult time for him) yet hardly anyone was there yet (’at dusk’ was also a difficult time for anyone who could not help but enquire about the health, family, and family’s health of any familiar face they passed). Nicolò scanned the group gathered around the fountain, and spotted the dark eyes he had come for.

Yusuf excused himself to his companions and walked over to Nicolò with an eagerness unwarranted by their two-day separation.

Nicolò swallowed away the thought of a thousand-year separation and folded his features into a smile. ‘You’re early.’

‘You told me to be,’ said Yusuf, clasping Nicolò’s arms. ‘I expected you to return the favour.’

‘I needed some more time to finish this.’ He held up the bowl, covered in a piece of linen to preserve the warmth, and watched Yusuf’s eyebrows rise ever so slightly. ‘You, um, remember how last week you said you loved getting to know people through food?’

‘I do…’

Nicolò felt heat creeping up his neck and cheeks at Yusuf’s intrigued smile. How could he still blush? He was pretty sure that hadn’t happened since – well. He cleared his throat and continued, ‘Um, so, this is a meal I used to eat a lot as a child. I thought, maybe… If you’d like to try it, you don’t have to –’

‘I’d love to.’ Yusuf reached for the bowl, his fingers brushing over Nicolò’s. Already the hours spent rolling pasta dough and crushing basil were worth it, just for that casual touch that Nicolò wasn’t even sure Yusuf noticed.

Yusuf unwrapped the cloth and brought the bowl to his nose. Closed his eyes, inhaled the fragrant steam. When he looked at Nicolò again, he asked, ‘Is this the scent of your home?’

‘The scent of my memories.’

‘Thank you for sharing them with me.’ He reached inside his robes and pulled out a wooden spoon, such a simple sign of human inconvenience that Nicolò cursed himself for having forgotten. As Yusuf prepared his first bite, he asked, ‘Where were you last night?’

‘My wife didn’t feel well,’ said Nicolò. ‘Did I miss anything good?’

‘Not really. I saved my work for tonight.’

They locked eyes, and now Nicolò wasn’t the only one blushing. He tried to distract himself by looking at the pasta, praying that he’d remembered the right quantities and nothing had gone off and Yusuf enjoyed Genoese cuisine and then he noticed Yusuf’s lips and he tugged at his collar to try and cool down.

‘Let’s see what Genoa taste like,’ said Yusuf, raising the spoon to his mouth.

Nicolò averted his gaze. The evening was unseasonably warm, he thought, remembering the lemonade he used to enjoy on hot summer days as a child, realising but not acknowledging that lemonade, no matter how cold, would not cool down the heat of his skin.

He didn’t even have a pulse, for God’s sake. How could his blood course with such fire?

He glanced at Yusuf again. He had a pulse. A blue vein bulged gently in his neck, pumping life through his body. Nicolò pictured himself placing his mouth under Yusuf’s jaw, feeling the stubble against his lips, the warmth of his skin…

‘This is really good,’ said Yusuf.

Nicolò blinked, back in the present.

Yusuf swallowed and dug his spoon in again, tilting the bowl towards Nicolò. ‘Would you like any?’

‘I had quite enough while making it.’

‘You sure? Because I will eat all of it if you don’t stop me.’

Nicolò wondered if he was just saying it to be nice, but Yusuf continued, ‘If I’d known the Genoese made food like this, I’d have travelled there much sooner. Maybe next time I can bring you something from my home.’

‘Maybe,’ said Nicolò.

He’d be vomiting blood for hours, but it would be worth it.

Tarik climbed atop the stone bench to the deafening applause of the crickets. Everybody gathered in a circle around him, Nicolò sitting cross-legged on the grass beside Yusuf. He tried to pay attention to Tarik’s introduction, but his mind was elsewhere.

He could change Yusuf.

He could hold on to Yusuf’s friendship forever.

He could wake up to the dark curls that peeked out by Yusuf’s temples. Not once, but every night, for as long as eternity would let them.

Nicolò clenched his teeth together. His extending fangs pressed against the inside of his lips, asking for permission to sink into Yusuf’s warm neck and find out what he tasted like. It was a hunger unlike any he’d known before. The gentle poetry recitation around him only fanned the flames, even though their meaning failed to register.

And then a word broke through his haze: Jerusalem.

Ever since he’d given his last breath, the mere mention of the Holy City raised the hairs on his arms. He watched Abbad, whose hands had the softness of a poet, as he recounted the valour of Saladin and his troops in their reconquest. He caressed the battle with his words, slaying dozens of men in a couplet, their screams aligning neatly with his metre.

Nicolò recalled the sound of death during the first Siege of Jerusalem. The blows falling on his body and those of the countless he struck had not followed a pattern, and he doubted this latest battle had been any better.

What pointless violence it had been. He did sometimes wonder if that was why Quýnh had saved him: to salvage at least one body from the destruction. Perhaps she should have chosen someone more deserving, but…

His fingers traced the scar on his neck. Anyone he’d killed that day would have been dead by now anyway. He wondered if, eventually, that wiped out some of the guilt, or if somewhere in Hell waited a spot just for him.

But then, maybe he didn’t need the Crusader guilt. As a creature of the night, living off blood, he must already be on the Devil’s guest list. No matter how careful he was with his victims, what he did to survive was wrong. It took what wasn’t his to take and –

Yusuf’s voice broke through the familiar train of thought.

Forearms resting on his knees, the empty pasta bowl in front of him, Yusuf flashed a smile as bright as the sun while he addressed the crowd. ‘I’m afraid my poetry holds less of the epic than Abbad’s. As you all know, I lack the talent to turn horrors into beauty. I merely take what is already beautiful and try to make it mine.’

‘We need some light entertainment after that,’ said Tarik. ‘And you’ve kept us waiting long enough.’

‘You will be the ones to judge whether the extra time has lifted the quality.’

Even the crickets seemed to fall silent when Yusuf cleared his throat and began.

> _My lover asks me:_
> 
> _‘What is the difference between me and the sky?’_
> 
> _The difference, my love,_
> 
> _Is that when you laugh_
> 
> _I forget about the sky_.

Nicolò watched Yusuf’s Adam’s apple move while he spoke, the rising of his chest as he paused for breath. A shred of basil stuck to the side of his lip. He couldn’t have been more mortal and alive if he’d tried. Nicolò wondered what he would look like after years, decades away from the sun. He stared at his own hands, milky white in the light of the rising moon, and swallowed.

He didn’t hear what the commentary of the others was. He didn’t hear Yusuf’s two other poems, or the praise he heaped on the next performer, or Tarik’s declaration that the poetry sharing was completed and he had a meal to come home to. The sudden movement of the others broke through Nicolò’s haze, and he pushed himself up from the grass, brushing the dried earth from the back of his thighs.

Yusuf reached out, placed his hand on Nicolò’s shoulder. ‘Everything all right?’

‘Fantastic,’ he said, with a manic smile. ‘Amazing. Yes. Great night. Brilliant.’

‘Let’s go for a walk,’ said Yusuf. ‘Or does your wife expect you back?’

‘Not for a while.’ He had to ensure they didn’t go near the Palace; explaining why Quýnh wandered the streets of Seville alone at night would get everyone into a complicated mess.

They set off, starting in the gardens. Nicolò focused on his inhalation, the unnatural rising of his chest almost enough of a distraction from the possibility of changing Yusuf. The scent of the orange trees, fresh and warm, filled his nose. He’d never had oranges, but he knew Yusuf loved them.

He had to stop thinking about this. He grappled for something else, and remembered tonight’s poetry. In the full awareness that he was about to out himself as the unartistic idiot he was, he asked, ‘Does your lover really ask about the difference between him and the sky?’

Yusuf gave him a sideways glance. ‘Sometimes my poetry comes wholly from my imagination. The man I love rarely asks me questions suitable for verse.’

‘Oh.’

 _The man he loves_. Of course, Yusuf had ties to this world. His wife, his lover, possibly his grey-haired parents, even if he never mentioned them. Nicolò remembered the last time he’d seen his brother’s body the night before burial, his leather-like, lined face at rest after a lifetime travelling to and from the Holy Land. Even his nieces and nephew and some of their children had died since.

‘The man I love is one of deeds, not words,’ said Yusuf. ‘A kindness, thoughtfulness, gentleness to everything he does. He holds the moonlight in his eyes, as it shines upon the sea and shines upon those fortunate to be around him.’

‘You sound very lucky,’ said Nicolò.

With every word Yusuf said, the right path became clearer: Nicolò couldn’t change him. Not when he loved someone. Not when he wanted to grow old with someone with moonlight in his eyes. He wished this knowledge, this confirmation that Yusuf’s lover wasn’t wholly imaginary, made things easier, but he’d never felt so dejected in his life or death.

Yusuf let out a slow breath, his eyes dancing over Nicolò’s face. ‘His light blinds him. He doesn’t know how I care for him. I am lucky, yet I burn for him without end.’

‘Maybe you should tell him,’ said Nicolò. ‘He would be very lucky, too.’

‘I try, but unfortunately he has the situational awareness of an empty egg-cup.’ He shook his head with something close to incredulity. ‘Subtlety tends to go over his head. I’ve heard he can’t help it, that the Ligurian culture prefers directness and fails to understand anything else.’

‘You’re in love with a Ligurian?’ Nicolò asked, twisting his neck. ‘Who? You should have s – _oooh_.’

Oh no.

Oh no oh no oh no.

He watched as Yusuf’s slow nods confirmed what his poetry had already said. _He_ was the beloved.

All his carefully laid-out plans to leave Yusuf and his loved ones alone crumbled. What had been something to hold onto as he made the decision he knew was right, had been yanked away from him.

Yusuf didn’t have a lover he wanted to grow old with.

Or rather, he did, but he couldn’t.

But that means that perhaps Nicolò could change him.

Did it?

Yusuf halted in his steps, his hand hovering over Nicolò’s upper arm. He met Nicolò’s gaze. Whatever he saw in there, it reassured him, and he lowered his fingers until they brushed over the fabric. Just enough pressure to set off all kinds of things in Nicolò’s body and mind and soul, and he didn’t understand any of it.

‘Apologies,’ said Yusuf. ‘I thought…’

‘You, um…’ Oh God, he was someone’s beloved. What did that mean for someone who was Undead? Did it change things, compared to someone who was alive? Not that it mattered, Nicolò realised with a panic. He didn’t exactly know how to be a mortal beloved either. ‘You thought correctly. I just – I didn’t realise –’

He remembered all Yusuf’s poetry over the last few weeks. Since he’d arrived in spring, the poems had moved from quiet observations to comparisons with the moon and the stars and he now realised that the blindness, too, had been a theme. So that’s what explained the other men’s knowing looks.

Yusuf’s hand slid down his arm, until the skin of their fingers met, and Nicolò didn’t know if he was aflame with love or mortification. Yusuf had cared for him all along.

He stared down at their entwined hands, his deathly pallor against Yusuf’s sun-drenched warmth. Sun-drenched – he might not be a poet, but that was the only word to describe Yusuf. His skin, his eyes, his laugh, everything he did radiated light. Not the silvery, cold light of the moon, but the brilliant, golden, all-consuming glory of the sun.

He squeezed Yusuf’s hand and pulled back, pretending not to see the hurt in Yusuf’s face. ‘The thing is, Yusuf, I am leaving Seville.’

‘You are? When?’

‘Tomorrow,’ he said. ‘My wife, she doesn’t take well to the climate here. She can’t live like this. I’m sorry, I would have told you sooner, but it was a snap decision.’

‘No, no, I understand,’ said Yusuf. The breeziness in his voice did not fool anyone. ‘Will you be back at some point?’

‘Not any time soon.’ Not while Yusuf was alive. The thought of returning to Seville and finding Yusuf old, withered, happily married with a dozen children, was unbearable. Better to wait until time had wiped out the warmth of his presence.

Yusuf’s lips turned up in a smile that, for once, didn’t reach his eyes. ‘That will teach me not to be too subtle.’

‘No, I think that particular, um, failure was on me,’ said Nicolò with a groan. ‘Yusuf, I am sorry.’

‘Me, too.’

Nicolò clenched his fists. For the second time that night, he thought he could feel his heart clench, as he drank in Yusuf’s features. The blush on his cheekbones, the point of his chin, the dimples in his cheeks where even the barber had failed to give him a smooth shave. What wouldn’t he give to gaze upon that face forever, but it wasn’t his to give. He couldn’t deprive the sun of Yusuf, nor Yusuf of the sun.

But _cazzo_ , it hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unlike Joe, I am not a poet. I shamelessly stole his poem from 20th century Syrian poet Nizar Qabbani, whose works I recommend you read because it is TENDER.  
> Next stop: Trondheim, 1279.


	4. Trondheim, 1279

Yusuf knew that immortality came at a price. He knew that hunting the Undead was a thankless but crucial job. He knew that, given the chance, he would accept this strange and inexplicable gift again, because he knew how many lives he’d saved.

That did not mean it had to be so mind-numbingly _cold_ , though. He thought he could remember what it felt like to breathe without it turning to ice in his mouth, but even those memories were fading into little more than fantasies.

He placed his gloved hands under his armpits, wondering how long it would take for his fingers to suffer from frostbite. His toes felt like they’d got there hours ago; he had since stopped sensing them at all. Maybe they’d grown back to life and died again. Who knew.

And now, to make matters worse, he was lost.

The sun had gone down just after his midday meal, and his hubristic assumption that he’d be able to find his way home through the tiny town of Trondheim was proven wrong.

Snow crunched behind him.

The hairs on Yusuf’s neck rose. His right hand slid down into his pocket, where the wooden stake lay ready. The moonlight against the path of snow gave him more than enough illumination, compared to some of the fights he’d been in. Ears pricked, eyes darting over the scene, but otherwise still as a statue, he waited.

Footsteps pushed the snow around. To his left. Yusuf cocked his head, fingers clenched around the stake, poised to strike, turned around –

And looked into eyes so light, the rim of the iris seemed to reflect the moon.

The face the eyes were a part of creased its brow, wearing an expression of such delicate concern that Yusuf’s fingers relaxed, and he let out the breath he’d been holding. Not an Undead, then. Just a local villager.

‘Are you lost?’ the stranger asked, and the words were Yusuf’s undoing. A Ligurian accent showing through even in Trondheim’s local dialect. He hadn’t heard one of those in years. And despite their weird Z’s and slurring of vowels, he _loved_ the Ligurian tongue.

‘Afraid so,’ he answered. The words sounded old-fashioned, even to him, but he hadn’t had to use his Genoese in decades. He just hoped it hasn’t changed too much since then.

Surprise flickered in the stranger’s eyes. ‘Where do you need to be?’

‘I’m staying near the shrine of Saint Olav.’

‘You are not too lost then,’ said the stranger. ‘I will walk you there. My name is Nils.’

‘Josef,’ said Yusuf, crossing the distance between them. He told himself it was to make communication easier, although their words carried easily over the blanket of cold. In truth, he wanted to get a closer look at Nils, and he was not disappointed. Underneath a heavy, furry hat, the planes and shadows of Nils’s face were an artist’s dream. Cheekbones that captured the moonlight, the darkness around his nose, defined lips smiling from a well-kept beard. And those eyes… He might not be able to do them justice in a drawing, but the poetic comparisons wrote themselves…

Something tickled the inside of his stomach, not unlike the feeling when he was around the Undead. Except this time, it was warm and fuzzy.

_Wow_.

He needed to get a grip. Having a type was one thing – but to turn into a moon-eyed schoolboy at a pair of pretty eyes and a Ligurian accent? He’d thought that after two centuries, his tastes had developed beyond such simplicity.

‘This way, come. The river is right there,’ Nils said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Somewhere a lot warmer than here,’ says said. ‘Where they eat more than pickled fish. How about you?’

Nils laughed. ‘Same. Except I’ve travelled so much, it’s difficult to point to one place. What brought you all the way up here?’

‘My wife heard about the magic in the skies,’ said Yusuf, which was the closest he and Andromache could get to a lie that sounded credible. It certainly wasn’t the weather, or the food, or the fineries of life that brought them here.

They rounded the corner, and as Nils had promised, the river waited just behind, a churning black stream delineated by the snow on either side. Nils had been right; he really hadn’t got very lost.

Still, he wasn’t about to complain about the way things had turned out.

‘Are you staying long?’ Nils asked.

‘A few weeks, perhaps. We hadn’t expected it to be quite so cold, or so dark.’

The darkness was hardest to bear, but also the main reason for their visit. Although Yusuf longed to feel the sun on his skin (and not just on the small patch of his cheeks that he dared expose to the elements), he missed the light even more. The Undead, however, thrived in such a season of night, and Andromache had picked up whispers that they had made the Kingdom of Norway a regular haunt.

And so here they were.

Nils grimaced in sympathy. ‘Do you know anyone here?’

‘You,’ said Yusuf, slowing down his pace. He could already see the guest house, but he was in no rush. ‘And the landlady, Emilie. How about you, what brought you here?’

‘Trade,’ said Nils. ‘The French go absolutely crazy for some of the pelts they have up here. I should have gone back earlier, but the cold came early this year, so I’m trying to earn enough to keep a fire going and wait for spring.’

‘Did you come alone?’

‘My wife joined. She doesn’t mind the cold, or the fish.’

So he was married.

Well, so was Yusuf. It didn’t have to mean anything either way. And he could swear that Nils’ cheeks lifted in a smile, although perhaps he was just a smile-y person. The lingering gaze, which then flitted away, didn’t have to be flirtatious. But it could be.

Yusuf halted in front of the door to his guest house, but did not open it. The landlady had been very explicit in her warnings about letting the cold in. Leaning against the wooden wall, he said, ‘Well, this is me. Thanks for helping me.’

‘We outsiders need to have each other’s backs,’ said Nils.

Neither of them moved, even though the goodbye could have been over and done with already. Yusuf’s insides twisted and turned, more excited than he had been in months. It really was like being a teenager all over again.

Nils put his hands in his pockets. ‘You know, the people here have found ways to spend the night. It is not so bad when you know them. Björn the Bloodthirsty is hosting a feast in two days’ time, to celebrate… well, probably just to get drunk, but he claims it’s to celebrate the start of Advent. You could come, if you wanted?’

_Bj_ _örn the Bloodthirsty_. He sounded like exactly the kind of individual he and Andromache should be tracking. And a feast, where the humans got drunk and lowered their guard, offered a prime opportunity for any Undead to smuggle them outside and then leave them to die in the cold.

‘Don’t I need to be invited?’ asked Yusuf, just to be sure.

‘I’m inviting you. I work for Björn, as a guard.’

‘Well, in that case…’ He smiled. ‘I’d be honoured. Where does he live?’

‘I’ll come and pick you up,’ said Nils. ‘Explain that you’re my guest, that sort of thing. Meet here, dusk, two days’ time?’

‘See you then.’

***

‘Let me get this straight,’ said Andromache, as Yusuf ran her ivory comb through his beard again. ‘You met a random stranger who invited you to feast with Björn the Bloodthirsty and you said yes because he’s pretty and talks like a sailor?’

‘That’s one way of phrasing it.’

‘Just putting your life choices into perspective.’

Yusuf tugged one final knot from his beard. He wished he’d brought some perfumed oils, but that seemed like a wasteful indulgence in these parts of the world. ‘Listen. If there are Undead in this town, they’ll be there tonight, hunting. I go in, survey the scene from the inside. If you want, you can stay outside and strike anyone suspicious coming out. But this is the opportunity we’ve been waiting for. He’s called Björn the Bloodthirsty. That is kind of a sign.’

‘And your pretty boy works for him!’

‘To make it through winter!’

‘Uh-huh. Of course. As if anyone would rather spend their winter up here, freezing to death, instead of in France.’

‘There’s a Crusade in France.’

‘Only a small one, and only in the south,’ she said. Nevertheless, Yusuf thought he could see her shoulders relax (it was difficult to tell in the layers of clothing they both donned, even when inside). ‘I’ll check the surroundings. Love-struck though you are, you’re probably right about the Undead.’

‘And if I’m wrong, you can enjoy the local mead and have a good night.’

She raised her eyebrows in doubt, just as three knocks announced their visitor. Yusuf ran his fingers through his hair, which was forever stuck to his skull now he had to cover his head all the time. ‘Shit. Is it already –’

‘You look _fine_ ,’ said Andromache.

He cast her a dark look, then rushed down to get the door before Emilie did. He mussed up his curls just a bit and lifted the bolt. There, a dark silhouette against the snow, stood Nils. He seemed built like a bear, and Yusuf wondered how much of that remained once the thick coat came off…

‘Just a second,’ he said. ‘I need to get my hat.’

‘Take your time,’ said Nils. ‘Björn has never been one to insist on punctuality.’

Yusuf clambered up the stairs. When he was halfway up, he looked over his shoulder; Nils hovered awkwardly by the threshold, craning his neck to see inside. The light from the central hearth revealed his features, as striking as Yusuf remembered.

Emilie glared, and Yusuf hurried to say, ‘Why don’t you come in? I won’t be long, but…’

‘Thank you.’ Nils stepped inside, pulling the door shut behind him. His shoulders filled the room, and Yusuf felt it again: those butterflies fluttering against his stomach. He hurried to the single room upstairs, scanning for his gloves and hat, ignoring Andromache’s amused smile.

‘I don’t think I’ve seen you like this since Seville,’ she said.

‘Yeah, and remember how that turned out? Can’t be too blunt with these Ligurians or they never catch on.’ He pecked her on the cheek, and asked, loudly enough for Nils to overhear: ‘Are you sure you’re not coming, Andrea, dearest?’

‘Oh, I must get some sleep tonight,’ she said. ‘But please, don’t let me get in the way of your evening. You have been looking forward to it so, and it was _so_ kind of Nils to invite you.’

She grinned, and he shook his head in defeat. When he returned downstairs, Nils was already by the door. ‘Let’s go.’

The moon had begun to wane in earnest. Yusuf stayed close to Nils, only too aware that if he got lost again, he might well freeze to death out here. Andromache had assured him it wasn’t the worst way to die, but…

They reached a wooden hut that was larger than most of the other cabins in the village, but that was about all that could be said for it. Yusuf had walked past a couple of times before and never thought twice about it; but now the slit underneath the door glowed with gold, and the ground underneath their feet bounced from the drums and dancing inside.

Two men, as big and burly as Nils, stood guard outside. Despite their furs, Yusuf did not envy them their job, especially when Nils led him inside, where a blazing fire and tumultuous crowd had heated the air so much that some people had even taken off their hats. The temperature was almost pleasant.

‘That’s Björn,’ said Nils, nodding towards a man with a luxurious blond moustache. His bare arms – _bare arms!_ Yusuf shuddered – bore the criss-cross pattern of battle, and when he threw his head back in laughter, about half his teeth were missing.

‘What got him the reputation of bloodthirst?’ asked Yusuf.

‘Started out as a butcher with excellent blood sausages, I’m told.’

Now Yusuf noticed Björn’s ruddy cheeks, the chicken leg clenched in his greasy fist. Aggressively alive.

He breathed a sigh of relief. Killing his host and the most prominent member of Trondheim society would have been a delicate undertaking. ‘So, your wife – is she around?’

Nils nodded towards the corner. ‘The one with the dark hair. Gunhild.’

Gunhild sat in a corner, laughing with some other women. She had taken off her hat, and a dark braid hung over her shoulder. Nils might well have said ‘the beautiful one’ and it would have been clear; Yusuf already wondered how he’d capture her perfect teeth, full lips and heart-shaped face in charcoal brush strokes.

She glanced over at them, her eyes taking in Yusuf with such curiosity he knew that Nils had mentioned him. It was a similar amusement he’d seen on Andromache’s face often enough.

‘I’ll introduce you two later,’ said Nils, guiding Yusuf towards the central spit, where a whole pig glistened with fat. Yusuf swallowed, kept a polite smile on his face, but Nils stopped just before they reached the cook.

‘I forgot to ask,’ he said, turning to Yusuf. ‘Is pork…?’

Yusuf shook his head.

‘No worries, I’ll find you something else.’

As they moved through the smoky room, Nils pointed out the big players of Trondheim. ‘That there is Björn the Bastard. Not illegitimate, just an ass. Torsten, his brother. Inga, keeper of the infamous inn. Frode the Fearless…’ He twisted his lips, shook his head, as they passed the twitchy, wide-eyed man. ‘As you can imagine, that nickname was ironically bestowed.’

Slowly, Yusuf began to warm up. Whether it was the fire, the crowd, or Nils, he couldn’t tell. Listening to Nils’s Ligurian, trying his hand at some of the local dances, being surrounded by more people than he’d seen together in ages, Yusuf felt more human than he had for weeks.

Although he’d been invited in order to meet others, they never paused long enough to get beyond basic introductions before he and Nils got caught up in different conversations. Nils’s travels were almost as extensive as Yusuf’s, and they exchanged experiences greedily.

Yusuf occasionally surveyed the scene for the pallor and death-like stares of the Undead, but everybody up here was so pale in winter, they could all have died years ago. And so he forgot about his fears, until an unusual rhythm in the drums startled Nils.

‘Nearly my time,’ he said, frowning. He stared at the guards around Björn, then craned his neck to check the door. ‘Listen, before my shift starts, maybe we can see the lights outside?’

Yusuf nodded, hoping his disappointment didn’t show.

Once they had left the relative warmth of the party behind them (and the gust of wind reminded Yusuf that the interior of Björns house _had_ , in fact, been ‘warm’), Nils guided him towards the river.

Although Yusuf had seen it before, the Northern Lights still took his breath away as they danced over the waters. Ethereal pinks and greens and aquamarines led the way to the stars, illuminating far-away mountains and the snow underneath Yusuf’s feet. Life here might be dark and cold, but this was the closest he had ever been to Heaven.

He looked to his side. Nils had not even glanced at the sky, his blue eyes on Yusuf instead. Nils bit his lip and twitched, raising his face upwards. But Yusuf knew that his mind was not on the Aurora.

A line of poetry drifted back into his memory. _When you laugh, I forget about the sky_. His stomach clenched. How long had it been since he’d written that? Decades. For someone who’s eyes bore the same intensity as Nils’s, but who would not have breathed the air of the living for a while now. What an idiot Nicolao had been, yet Yusuf still thought about him every time he smelt basil.

‘Was it worth it, for your wife?’ asked Nils. ‘The journey here?’

He focused on the man who was here, now, with him. Handsome, kind, eager – and all he had in this moment. ‘It was.’

‘You must love her very much, to travel all the way.’

‘I do,’ said Yusuf. After two centuries, Andromache knew him like no one else, even if he still thought he barely scratched her surface. Yet that was not was Nils was getting at, was it? He moved closer to Nils, cursing the many layers that kept their bodies from being able to touch. ‘What about your wife?’

Nils hesitated. The northern lights played in his eyes, more beautifully even than moonlight over the Nile. ‘We, um, have an understanding.’

So he hadn’t been imagining it. Yusuf’s heart raced, eager like when he had been a boy. ‘I see. And –’

Before he could continue, Nils leant forward and pressed his lips to Yusuf’s. It was a clumsy kiss, and they stumbled backwards, the snow crunching under their feet. When they pulled away, Nils’s eyes were wide like a fawn’s.

‘I – sorry – I’ve never –’ he stammered.

Yusuf blinked, his mouth still tingling from Nils’s beard. He wanted to pick up where their clumsiness had left them, but Nils’s words stopped him in his tracks. ‘Wait, you’ve never…? But you said you had an understanding…?’

‘We have it, but I have never…’

Yusuf honestly couldn’t tell if Nils had never kissed a man, or never kissed anyone, so bumbling and embarrassed was the Ligurian. Well, of course, he did know – Nils was married, after all. Surely, at some point, he must have kissed his wife.

He removed his gloves and placed his hands on each side of Nils’s face, his thumb stroking over the exposed cheekbone. Already the tips of his fingers protested at the wind, but it was worth it to see the nerves fade from Nils’s eyes.

‘No need to rush,’ he said.

Nils glanced over Yusuf’s shoulder, where Björn’s house waited. ‘I don’t have long until my shift…’

Typical Ligurians. Leaving it until the last minute. Yusuf wondered what would happen if Nils were immortal like him. Would the available eternity cause the same type of delays, so they’d dance around each other until the world were ending?

He brushed his lips over Nils’s, gentle at first, waiting for Nils to relax into the kiss. His beard and the fur lining of his cloak smelt of the smoke and grease from Björn’s party, but underneath that hid something warm, southern, familiar.

Nils shifted his weight, snaking an arm around Yusuf’s waist and pressing him as close as their clothing would allow. Their teeth clashed when they both broke out into awkward grins, and Yusuf increased the pressure.

However, when he suddenly found a tongue stuck down his throat, he paused.

He hadn’t kissed like this since he was mortal. And even then, it had been a long, long time since such sudden enthusiasm had been coupled with this lack of skill. Opening his mouth slightly, he hoped Nils picked up on the balance between tongue, lips, and pressure, and came to the conclusion that Nils had, indeed, never.

Never, never.

‘No need to rush,’ he whispered again, in between soft, small kisses. ‘Take… your… time. Björn doesn’t care for punctuality, I hear.’

‘You’re right,’ Nils said. ‘Sorry, I…’

Whatever apology he might think necessary, Yusuf silenced it with more kisses. And Nils was getting the hang of it quickly, his embrace tightening just right, his mouth urging on hungrily. Yusuf felt a twitch between his legs when Nils took his lip between his teeth and pulled.

Suddenly, Nils broke away, his white eyes focused behind Yusuf. Yusuf turned around, to see Gunhilde hurrying towards them. Her braid had become undone, and long, dark hair splayed around her face, like a raven’s wings just before flight.

Yusuf froze. If that ‘understanding’ hadn’t been made clear before, there was no denying it now. But Nils made no move to let go of him, didn’t step away in shame, and Gunhilde barely paid any attention to him at all. She said something in a language Yusuf didn’t understand, didn’t even recognise, but Nils tensed immediately and gave a similarly incomprehensible reply.

She threw her hands in the air, cast a final warning look at Yusuf, and left. Nils stared at her departing back, his shoulders slumping.

‘Is she all right?’ Yusuf asked.

Nils shook his head. ‘I’m really sorry, Josef, I – I need to go home.’

‘Is it because of me?’

He smiled, pressing another kiss to Yusuf’s lips, already moving with the confidence of familiarity instead of his earlier hesitation. A quick student. ‘Not at all. But I do need to go with her. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry –’

‘Don’t apologise for anything,’ said Yusuf, succeeding in keeping his voice light. ‘I had a nice time.’

And perhaps it was better this way as well. Without meaning to, he’d begun to blend Nicolao and Nils in his mind, using the latter to finally experience what it was like to kiss the former. That wasn’t fair. At least if it remained at this one kiss, it would be… easier. A contained episode, not something that would gnaw at his heart for the next few years or even decades.

And still, he said, ‘Will I see you again?’

‘Of course.’

He watched as Nils loosened his embrace. Lights more beautiful than the aurora above them played in Nils’s eyes, waiting to be eternalised in song. As he watched the Ligurian trace his wife’s footsteps through the snow, Yusuf ran an icy finger over his lip, which still stung from Nils’s bite. Or perhaps he was imagining it. Such a small wound would have closed up almost immediately.

Led by the feather-like colours in the sky, Yusuf returned home.

He did not see Nils again.


	5. Trondheim, 1279

‘You need some fresh air.’ Quýnh placed her hand on Estrid’s lower back and urged her upwards. Smiling at the other women in their circle, she assured them, ‘I’ll go with her.’

‘Shouldn’t she just go home?’ Inga asked.

 _Even better_ , Quýnh thought, nodding vigorously. ‘You’re right. I live not too far away from her; I’ll take her and then stay in for the night, too.’

‘I’m not that drunk,’ insisted Estrid. ‘I am _fine!_ ’

Knowing Estrid’s reputation for a left punch whenever she felt patronised, Quýnh switched tactics. ‘It’s a stupid party anyway, and you just know Björn is going to be an ass at the end of it. Let’s go for a walk and then see how you feel, all right?’

Estrid’s nostrils flared. ‘I am not going _anywhere_ merely because _Björn the Blue-balled -_ ’ She glared at their host, who, Quýnh noticed, was talking to a very unfortunate girl of Inga’s. The girl was smiling and laughing at something Björn said, even though he was utterly lacking in wit, manners, or anything else that might make him attractive, other than having the most bulging muscles and biggest house.

‘He’d better leave a good tip,’ Inga muttered. ‘The bed will reek of his sweat for weeks.’

Not for the first time, Quýnh thanked the providence that had given her Nicolò. In the ten years of loneliness before she accidentally changed him, her itinerant lifestyle had meant occasionally sharing the bed of – well – anyone with a bed. Having a ‘husband’ who now washed when she told him to and doubled the opportunity for income, her rhythm was once again aligned to her own nocturnal needs, rather than any pretence for the humans.

Nicolò. He was easy to spot, leaning against the wall, talking to that new friend of his, both of them beaming at each other. Cute.

‘ _I just wanted to help him,_ ’ he’d said, when questioned about the invitation. ‘ _Remember when we got here? It’s cold enough without adding loneliness to the mix._ ’

Well, looked like Nicolò it upon himself to address that loneliness. Had he been anyone else, Quýnh might have wondered whether this Josef would end up in their little hut later tonight, but she wasn’t sure if Nicolò even knew that was a possibility. More than two centuries on this earth and his priestly education still kept him chaste as the day he was born.

She turned her attention back to Estrid. ‘Come, dear. He’s not worth it.’

‘Damned right he isn’t.’ If looks could kill, Björn would have dropped dead right there. But unfortunately for everyone involved, the daggers from Estrid’s eyes did him no harm.

On her way outside, Quýnh tried to signal to Nicolò what she was doing, that he didn’t have to wait for her, that she was sorted for the night, but he was listening intently to something Josef said and had lost all interest in the world around him. She caught a glimpse of Josef; the natural crow’s feet around his eyes deepened, the creases pushed into his skin by the smile that wouldn’t leave his face even while he was talking.

Perhaps she shouldn’t go home after all. If only she could let Nicolò know that he could have the place to himself, maybe he’d pick up on the hints Josef was scattering all over the place?

Well, Nicolò was a grown man. She’d talk to him about it tomorrow. There was no way he’d act before then, anyway.

It was a relief to step outside and smell the crispness of the Norwegian winter, instead of the body odours and greasy food of the party. Quýnh breathed in deeply, cleansing her lungs with the icy air.

One of the two guards – Svend, a giant who wasted his time guarding when his massive hands longed for the flute – craned his neck. ‘Is she all right?’ he asked.

‘Just taking her home,’ said Quýnh. ‘Could you tell Nils when you see him?’

‘’Course. Good night, Gunhild.’

Both Quýnh and Estrid held the bottom of their hoods closed with their hands as they set off. Although night-time had fallen hours ago, the snow reflected the light to form a dazzling, light-blue path between the shadowy shapes of the houses. At least, it did for Quýnh; her eyes had been perfectly adapted to the dark for so long, she couldn’t remember a time when night was not clear as day.

Only when they reached Estrid’s house did Quýnh remember she had never been invited in. No matter; she wouldn’t take so much that Estrid couldn’t make her way to her bed. Halting just by the door, Quýnh raised her head so she looked Estrid straight in the eyes, unblinking, until the dark pupil’s clouded over.

‘This will only hurt for a moment,’ she whispered, pushing open Estrid’s hood and bringing her mouth to the warm, pulsing vein in Estrid’s neck. Her fangs, already extended, grazed the skin when –

Quýnh’s head snapped back, dragged away by the roots of her hair. The rough grip tore at her skin, until her assailant pushed her away. Out of kilter, Quýnh stumbled forward, spinning around with a shriek when she heard the battle cry behind her.

The pointed end of a stake flashed against the northern lights. Quýnh ducked, swivelled, raised her arm to parry the next blow – and froze.

This wasn’t just some Undead hunter.

She remembered those cheekbones. She recognised those green eyes. She knew the dark hair that was now hidden underneath a heavy cap. She’d run her fingers through it thousands of times, combed it with rose oil before braiding, felt it tickle against her nose when she woke up.

‘Andromache?’ she gasped.

Even now, the name was tinged with hope.

Andromache the Scythian froze, and both women stared at each other.

Almost two hundred years, and she hadn’t changed a bit. _Almost two hundred years_.

Quýnh drank in the sight of her. It had been so long since she’d dared to recall Andromache’s features, afraid that dwelling on them would fade the memories like a sun-exposed tapestry. ‘I’ve miss–’

The blow to her temple knocked her back.

Head still spinning, Quýnh’s survival instincts kicked in. She dodged Andromache’s kick, snatched the momentary imbalance to drag her down into the snow. Within the blink of an eye, Andromache had leaped up again, the stake extending her arm into a deadly threat.

Despite the centuries apart, Quýnh knew what came next. Ducking under Andromache’s arm, she lifted her elbow to knock back, but Andromache remembered, too, and had evaded her before Quýnh had even got halfway there. Every move one made, the other had seen hundreds of times before. Snowy clouds sprung up at their feet when they kicked, swivelled, parried, until the road bore the map of their fight.

‘Andromache, please, stop!’

‘So you can kill someone else?’ Andromache hissed. ‘So you can feed upon the life of another innocent?’

‘Andromache –’

It did no good. Dodging and striking, Quýnh wondered if they would go on like this until the sun came up and did Andromache’s work for her.

Blow after blow missed, until Quýnh slipped.

Her foot slid over the black ice uncovered by their fight, and in the moment of weakness, Andromache pinned her to the wall of Estrid’s house, right where Quýnh had, only so recently, hoped to get her dinner.

Andromache’s breath blew warm against her cheek, and Quýnh could not help but admire the colour the exercise had brought to the Scythian’s features. Her cap had fallen off during the fight, revealing the intricate braid underneath.

 _She can’t have done that herself_ , Quýnh thought. _She’s found a companion._

How odd that such a realisation could still hurt.

The point of the stake pressed against Quýnh’s heart, noticeable even though her fur-lined coat. She wondered if the wood would make it through deep enough to pierce her skin and then her lungs, but, knowing Andromache, a backup weapon would be drawn before her next breath.

‘So this is it, then?’ Quýnh asked. ‘You’re going to kill me now?’

Andromache pressed harder, the fabric dipping into the pressure. ‘You died a long time ago.’

‘As did you, my love. Yet here we are.’

Her jaw clenched, and Quýnh realised she’d hit a nerve.

‘I am nothing like you,’ Andromache spat. ‘What you did to Lykon…’

The accusation, even unfinished, pierced more harshly than any stake. Quýnh gritted her teeth, but what did she have to say in response? It wasn’t as if Andromache was wrong. As if Quýnh hadn’t failed them.

‘I’m sorry, you don’t know how sorry I am –’

‘Sorry isn’t going to bring him back.’ Andromache pressed the weapon against Quýnh’s chest, but it needed the force of a blow to even hope to break through her clothes. Both women stood there, silently, in the dark, waiting for the moment of vengeance.

But Quýnh wanted to live.

She couldn’t stand here and watch.

She counted Andromache’s weapons. The stake, plus of course one or two more hidden inside her coat; the axe slung over her shoulder; a sheath dangling from her hips. That, and of course nails that could rip out a throat if they had to. Quýnh pushed away the memories of those hands around her neck. Except…

_Here we are, my love._

Her eyes slid to her right, where darkness lay outside of Trondheim. She had always been the night scout, her eyes vastly superior to those of her more human companions. If she could just make it _out_ , where Andromache couldn’t track her, she might stand a chance.

‘You’re not going anywhere,’ said Andromache, stepping forward, until her face rested less than an inch from Quýnh’s. ‘I have been waiting for this for too long to let you escape.’

‘Why would I want to escape?’ asked Quýnh. ‘I’m right where I want to be: with you.’

In less than a blink, she had closed the distance between them, pressing her lips to Andromache’s.

She caught a whisper of roasted reindeer and honey and – thank the heavens – surprise. Andromache dropped her stake, raising her free hand to cup Quýnh’s cheek, fingers trailing past the hair that had come undone. Quýnh sighed, prayed, and, with the knife she’d slipped from Andromache’s belt, stabbed her beloved in the neck.

She didn’t wait to see the results of her attack. Pushing Andromache off of her, Quýnh raced through the streets of Trondheim. When she spotted Björn’s house, she all but smacked against the door in her rush to get in.

‘Everything all right, Gunhilde?’ Svend asked, staring at the street she’d come from. The other guard had already drawn his sword, ready to face off an army if needed. ‘You’re bleeding –’

‘I – It looks worse than it is – I – Nils – where is he?’ she stammered.

Svend reached for her neck, where splatters of Andromache’s blood clung to her fur collar. ‘We should get Inga, she can –’

‘I don’t need any help, I need to find Nils!’

‘By the river,’ he said. ‘Let me come –’

‘No need.’

She smiled, hoping it would reassure him enough not to sound the alarm, and ran in the direction he’d pointed. Her chest still ached from the point of Andromache’s stake, her lips tingled from their kiss, and every nerve in her body told her to flee. Andromache might be taken by surprise once, but that was all Quýnh was going to get.

She had to get out of here.

Perhaps Andromache had died just now. That would buy her some more time. Quýnh found herself furiously wishing for the temporary death of her oldest friend, as she dashed towards the figure by the river.

No. Not figure. _Figures._

The two men were so closely entwined, at first they seemed like one big, broad, fat man. But as she approached them, Quýnh noted with a sinking feeling that Nicolò, for once, got lucky.

‘Oh Nico,’ she whispered. ‘Why now?’

Nicolò broke away from the kiss, lifting his chin to look over Josef’s shoulder. He widened his eyes in surprise, frowning just slightly, enough that Josef turned around too.

They didn’t have time for this. Quýnh skidded to a halt, remembering to do some heavy breathing so Josef wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary, and told him in Vietnamese: ‘We have to leave right now. No time to grab our things, just – now!’

He blinked, probably not even noticing his own gestures towards Josef. ‘What do you mean? What’s wrong?’

But he knew. They had prepared for things like this, sudden departures, questions to be asked later.

Quýnh cocked her head, just enough that Nico could tell this was not a game. His gaze didn’t leave her, even though his arms remained tightened around Josef, and she threw her hands in the air in frustration.

 _Fine_. He could have his goodbye.

Lowering her hand to her waist, she raised two fingers to let him know where she was going, and set off into the darkness. He would join her soon enough.

**

Closing her eyes in the hopes that she could trick herself into imagining it wasn’t this vile, Quýnh sank her teeth into the doe’s neck. The bestial, terrified scent, the impurity of the blood, all of it made her want to be sick. But at least it was food

She drank warm, pulsing mouthfuls, knowing that her next meal might be some days, if not weeks, away. The blood mixed with Andromache’s on her clothes, leaving its rusty scent. It revolted her.

Nicolò sat on a fallen tree, waiting his turn, playing with the arrow that had taken down their dinner. He’d been silent for most of their journey through the woods, but when Quýnh raised her head and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, she knew questions were coming.

‘What happened in Trondheim?’ he asked.

‘You should eat now, before she bleeds out.’

‘What happened?’

‘Eat and I’ll tell you.’

With obvious distaste, he did as he was told. The blood ran through his beard, thickening it into a black, lukewarm mess. Quite different than he might have enjoyed from Josef.

Even between them, they couldn’t drink an entire deer’s worth. When Nicolò pulled back, his features twisted in disgust, a dark pool began to form under the twitching body. In the distance, a wolf sang its threat.

‘We should keep going,’ Quýnh said. ‘East. Follow me.’

Nicolò didn’t budge. ‘Why are we running?’

‘We’re not running, we’re just… Fine.’ It had been over a century since she’d successfully lied to her only constant companion, and to be honest, she could not be bothered to make something up. ‘I’ll tell you on the way, all right? It’s a long story.’

‘How long?’ he asked, as he fell into step beside her.

 _How long?_ They’d met around the tenth Olympiad, or so they’d later puzzled out with some modicum of certainty, but what did that mean to Nicolò?

‘A good couple of centuries before your Lord and Saviour came to earth in human form,’ she began, and pretended not to notice the way his body tensed, ‘I met a woman by the name of Andromache the Scythian.’


	6. Genoa, 1348

Dr Cataneo did not open the door.

Instead, Nicolò was greeted by an exhausted stranger.

‘The doctor –’ he began, but the stranger shook his head.

‘Developed a fever this morning.’

Nicolò made the sign of the cross, the one show of faith he could still perform without excruciating pain, as his heart sank through his stomach. It had only been a matter of time even for someone so strong, so kind, so _good_ as Dr Cataneo. In the end, no one could escape the Plague.

‘God rest his soul,’ he said. Even if Dr Cataneo were still alive tonight, it wouldn’t last. ‘And the family?’

The stranger hesitated, and that alone told Nicolò enough even before he shook his head again. ‘Fredericha passed away just now. The children around midday.’

‘All of them?’ Nicolò peered over the stranger’s shoulder, as if Lucia might pop up and wave at him, her gap-toothed smile reassuring him that the stranger was just playing a game. Of course, that didn’t happen.

All six children. Their father had only grown ill three days ago, and now the whole family was gone. Even at the darkest hours of the Crusades, death had not spread to quickly, so indiscriminately. The thought that those children would soon join the other nameless corpses in the mass graves outside the city chilled Nicolò to the bone.

‘Come,’ the stranger said, pulling the door closed behind him. ‘I need to eat, and you look like you need company.’

‘There are other families that might need my help,’ Nicolò said. ‘I should…’

‘You should sit down before you faint.’ The stranger rested the back of his hand on Nicolò’s forehead, like some fearless idiot who thought himself immune to the disease, or a dedicated doctor who valued his duty above his own life and would pay dearly for it. ‘You haven’t got a fever, but you look pale as death. I can’t let you go in a state like this.’

Nicolò waited, beyond caring, as the stranger adjusted the kerchief in front of his face. The new fashion to ward off bad air had spread more slowly than the disease, and as they traversed the streets down to the harbour, only about a quarter of the faces they passed had adopted it. Others preferred to cross themselves for each person they encountered, or, Nicolò had heard, dangle dead frogs from a chain underneath their clothes. No method seemed more effective than the next, and death came for all of them anyway.

But the whole Roverino family, gone. It was incomprehensible.

Any curfew, night time patrols, or other limitations the city placed upon its citizens’ time, had long since been given up. The inn the stranger entered hadn’t closed for days, partially because the innkeeper knew that these would be the last customers he’d see for a long, long while; partially because time was meaningless when anyone could drop dead tomorrow. Inside, the stranger asked Nicolò if he wanted anything; when he shook his head, the stranger indicated he’d like a large portion of whatever was going that night, and steered Nicolò to one of the tables outside.

The stranger lowered his kerchief, revealing a unkempt beard underneath. Seeing the lower half of his face reassured Nicolò; it gave him something to look at other than those eyes and their pity.

‘You don’t have to look after me,’ he said. _It_ _’s not like this will kill me,_ he wanted to add. Doctors died faster than their patients; this man wouldn’t live to tell the tale.

‘It’s my duty to care for those in need,’ said the stranger. ‘And you might be the first one in a long time that won’t die on me during my shift. Please stay with me a while. For me, if not for yourself.’

Underneath the ghost of a smile, Nicolò saw the exhaustion and pain the doctor must have witnessed. Perhaps he was right. Neither of them should be alone right now.

The stranger reached inside his tunic and pulled out another kerchief, this one orange with the phases of the moon stitched in yellow, and handed it to Nicolò. ‘You should wear this. It protects you from inhaling the vapours.’

‘Thank you.’ He picked it up and ran it through his fingers. The material was smooth, soft, comfortable, all the luxuries a doctor’s dangerous job bought them. It would be wasted on Nicolò, but he found himself loathe to return it. ‘Does it work?’

‘If it doesn’t, it doesn’t do any harm either,’ the stranger said. ‘And it makes some feel safe. At this point, that’s the most I can hope to achieve. Well, that, and…’ He trailed off, and whatever had remained of his smile faded.

‘… and making the end easier to bear,’ Nicolò finished. ‘Thank you, signor…?’

‘Giuseppe,’ he said. ‘Son of Abramo.’

‘Nicolò.’

Giuseppe waited for a bit, but Nicolò had nothing to add. ‘Of Genoa’ was superfluous here, and his father had died such a long time ago that it wouldn’t help anyone to identify him. Sometimes he joked to Quýnh that he should be ‘Nicolò of Quýnh’, but that would be quite a background to explain.

Both fell silent after that, waiting for the food to be brought out. Any normal avenues of conversation had been barricaded by death. Work, family, travel, even the incidence of their meeting, all of it was tainted.

The entire family, dead. Santa Maria, had Giuseppe watched over all of them as they slipped out of life over the course of a single day?

The innkeeper came out with a streaming bowl of broth and a small loaf, and the humanity of it made Nicolò want to cry. He watched as Giuseppe pulled a spoon from his robes, and wondered when he had last broken bread with anyone.

Giuseppe tore the loaf into two and held out half to Nicolò. ‘You should eat.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Even a first-year medical student can see that’s not true. A blind child could see that’s not true,’ Giuseppe corrected. ‘Bread, soup, or both, but you need something. Doctor’s orders.’

 _To Hell with it_ , Nicolò thought. If he did end up vomiting blood, he wouldn’t even be out of place any more. That’s just what life in Genoa was like now. He accepted the smaller piece of bread, still warm and soft from the oven.

Giuseppe pushed the bowl into the middle of the table and dipped a piece of his bread into it, his stern eyes indicating Nicolò was expected to do the same.

At the end of the world, human kindness had not disappeared.

‘So what brought you to Genoa?’ Nicolò asked, as he tore of the tiniest bit of crust and hovered it over the soup.

‘Promises of the food,’ Giuseppe said. ‘You a local, then?’

‘Sort of. Near the church of San Lorenzo.’ The house he’d grown up in had been torn down and replaced twice already, built of stone now instead of the wood he’d used to carve into when he was bored. He and Quýnh had taken over an empty merchant’s house, the most luxurious home they’d ever had, but he hated being there. The walls still carried the stink of the owner’s disease, weeks after they had relieved him from his suffering. ‘But I’m currently staying near the colle di Carignano.’

‘And you’re a surgeon, or…?’

He shook his head. ‘But someone has to look after them. I trained as a priest centuries ago. The prayers and consolation haven’t changed, even if I have.’ He lifted a soup-soaked piece of bread to his lips and smelt it. Onion, carrot, some form of beef. He placed it on his tongue gingerly, letting it dissolve in his mouth, the flavours all wrong. He waited as long as he could before he swallowed. The food sliding down his throat felt almost familiar.

Almost, but not quite.

Giuseppe watched him intently. His gaze reminded Nicolò of Yusuf, sweet, poetic Yusuf, who fortunately had been saved the sight of all this misery. Even his eternal smile would have frozen and died.

Giuseppe’s eyes flashed with something approaching life, but just at that moment, a cart laden with bodies passed, and he let out a wobbly sigh. ‘Priest, doctor, they die all the same.’

‘They do. Good heavens, they do. I’ve never even been afraid of something like this,’ Nicolò said. ‘Even Judgement Day, I hadn’t imagined so much suffering.’

‘No one had,’ said Giuseppe. ‘Even if you’d lived for ten, twenty generations, you wouldn’t have seen anything like this.’

Nicolò almost smiled at that. He had no idea how right he was. Even Quýnh, whose age went so far back she must have predated the Flood, had never seen such relentless death. For once, their lifespans had not prepared them.

‘Do you think God hates us?’ Nicolò asked. ‘Is that why He keeps us healthy and strong? So we can watch all the suffering around us without being able to help?’

‘You do help, Nicolò,’ Giuseppe said, reaching over the table. ‘Fredericha lit up when she spoke of you. As did Elisa. Not because they liked you, but because you were there for them when their parents couldn’t be. Because you helped them when they needed it. They are with God now, but perhaps He keeps you here because you are needed on earth?’

The last thing this earth needed was someone like him. Someone living off the blood of his dying patients, someone so cut off from God that he couldn’t even enter a church any more.

He wanted to cry. The bread lay inside his stomach, alien, unwelcome, upsetting.

Giuseppe patted Nicolò’s arm, his fingers warm and not slippery from sickness and sweat. ‘None of us understand His plan. But He does not abandon His children.’ He hesitated. ‘Even if sometimes it seems that way.’

‘Some of us have done things He would never forgive,’ said Nicolò.

‘No one is past His forgiveness.’

Despite his youth, Giuseppe looked as if he had seen as many centuries as Nicolò. It was the same worn-out, exhausted, forsaken expression everyone wore now, as if the Plague had aged them all beyond what was humanly possible.

Doctors died every day. It broke Nicolò’s heart to know that someone with such kindness as Giuseppe would not make it through this disease, taken down by his own selflessness to help others. But in a way, it was liberating. He could be honest, now any conversational partner was likely to pass into God’s arms before they could tell anyone.

‘I’ve killed innocents,’ he said. ‘Killed them because they didn’t think the way I thought they should. Killed them because I needed them dead so I could survive. Killed them because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. I wouldn’t forgive me. God shouldn’t.’

Giuseppe didn’t flinch. ‘It is not for us to decide what He should and should not forgive. Only to try and live according to His will. Penance won’t undo what you’ve done, but the only way is forward.’

‘You sound experienced,’ said Nicolò.

‘Priests now have to act like doctors, and doctors like priests.’

They looked at each other, both so out of their depth, both so relieved to have found someone else. Someone who wasn’t dying or desperate or drunk on fear.

Nicolò averted his gaze, unable to bear the kindness in Giuseppe’s eyes. ‘You remind me of an old friend.’

‘Funny,’ Giuseppe said. ‘I was going to say the same about you. As if we’ve known each other for ages.’

‘Exactly!’

Slowly, Giuseppe’s smile came to life, crinkling the skin around his eyes, deepening the dimples that had been hidden until now, and Nicolò felt like he could feel the rays of the sun warming him for the first time since Seville. Yusuf was long gone, but his spirit lived on in so many still walking the earth.

This was not the end of the world.

Nicolò rolled his shoulders, placed the bread back on Giuseppe’s side of the table. ‘Thank you,’ he said, feeling his features morph into something like a smile, long though it had been since they had done that. ‘You were right, I needed this, but I’m fine now. There will be many families in need of a night doctor. I would like to help them.’

‘Take the rest of the bread,’ Giuseppe urged, holding it out to him. ‘The night is long. You’ll need your strength.’

‘I’ve found my strength.’ He placed his hand over Giuseppe’s, relishing once again the feeling of warmth and life. He could not undo what he had done, but he could help people now. ‘Thank you, Giuseppe. May God protect you.’

‘And you.’ Giuseppe tightened his grip, the bags under his eyes succumbing to his smile-lifted cheeks. ‘Until we meet again, Nicolò. I will pray to God that it is soon, and in good health.’

They did meet again.

It wasn’t soon.

And if you’d told Nicolò that he would be butt naked and lying on a table, he would have assumed the Plague had meddled with your senses, but then he had never been known for his predictive abilities.


	7. Rome, 1484

‘You made it!’ Vincenzo slapped Yusuf on the back as he led him through the door and down the stairs. The steps were cloaked in darkness, but from the end of the corridor, warm flickering light and the scent of pinewood smoke guided them towards the abandoned cellar. A set of easels stood in a half-moon. Yusuf waved at the one other painter there, Gabriele, and let his eyes drift towards the model.

He dropped the stack of sketch paper.

‘Sorry – sorry.’ He moved out of the way so Vincenzo could pass easily as he gathered up the sheets. He took his time, hoping his cheeks would stop burning as much as they did before he lifted his head again.

Vincenzo grinned, leaning against the wall. ‘Doesn’t he look like Mars personified?’

‘You can say that again.’ Yusuf blinked, trying to take it all in. The strong, Roman nose; the noble forehead; the full lips; not to mention the slope of his back, ending in the most shapely ass Yusuf had seen in centuries.

But even the ass faded compared to the eyes, commanding like emperor Constantine’s, which seemed to hold all the colours of the Mediterranean in them. Eyes that Yusuf had immortalised in poetry a hundred times, which widened in surprise when they saw him.

‘You guys know each other?’ Vincenzo asked.

Yusuf tried to recall when he’d last seen those features - and realised that they had _not_ met. Even eyes as stunning as this man’s were bound to come up once every few centuries. Perhaps he was related to the dejected priest Yusuf had met so many decades ago, but that was all.

Still, he could not shake the excitement that roared in his stomach.

‘Nicolò, meet Yusuf,’ said Vincenzo, as he assigned Yusuf to an easel. ‘Yusuf, Nicolò, our model. We’re practising the dying warrior. I picked him up near the Pantheon and just knew…’

‘This is the face,’ Gabriele finished.

Nicolò cleared his throat and glanced down. ‘A bit more than my face.’

‘Greek heroes rarely dressed,’ said Vincenzo, brushing the concerns away with a flick of his hand. ‘You know how rare it is to find a model who lives and breathes the look of the subject?’

‘Perhaps I should charge more,’ said Nicolò. He lifted his eyes to Yusuf for the first time, the small twist of his lips hinting at… well… something. Embarrassment? Recognition? Whatever it was, it nailed Yusuf to the ground.

He could feel the gaze of the other two artists on him as well, and picked up his knife to sharpen his charcoal. It gave him something to look at that didn’t kindle the flames inside of him. ‘Thank you for making time for our little band of artists tonight, Nicolò.’

‘It’s not every day I get told my features will set the world of art alight.’ That accent. What was it about the Genoese that made their men so beautiful? Yusuf wondered. Or was it him, was he bound to fall for any man who preferred Zs to Gs and slurred his vowels?

He wished he would stop feeling quite so hot around the ears.

‘Could you move your arm forward,’ Gabriele said. ‘Yes, like that…’

Yusuf kept going until his pencil was sharper than it had ever been. When he could not fool himself any longer, he turned to the paper, aligned it against the hard wooden back, pressed it flat, realigned it, placed the tip of the charcoal against it, and looked.

Nicolò, for all his beauty, was not a natural model. Forcing himself to see with the eye of the artist, Yusuf noticed a hesitation in the turn of Nicolò’s neck, a restlessness in his fingers.

‘First time?’ he asked, as he traced the arch of the back on the paper.

‘Does it show?’ said Nicolò.

‘In a good way.’

Gabriele, without moving his eyes away from Nicolò, said: ‘Stop moving your head, please.’

‘Sorry.’

Despite the torches and the season, Nicolò’s bare skin had broken out in goose bumps in the draft of the cellar, but he remained almost perfectly still as the artists committed him to paper.

Yusuf worked his way through a couple of sketches of a dying hero, perhaps Patroclus or Hector caught at the moment just before defeat. Looking at each body part in turn made it easier. The tension in the arm as the soldier tried to push himself up one last time, or the fatigue already spreading through his legs. Yusuf, situated at the foot side of the scene, thankfully didn’t have much sight of Nicolò’s face. It would have been impossible to concentrate with those eyes in full view.

Eventually, Nicolò cleared his throat. ‘Could I have a break?’

The artists looked up in confusion. A glance at the candles told Yusuf that time had flown by, as ever, and he felt a twinge of guilt. Nicolò must be stiff as a plank.

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘Actually, I need to go home,’ said Gabriele, hiding his yawn behind his hand. ‘Vittoria is waiting for me. But thanks, Nicolò - you are a natural. Cardinal Strozzi is thinking of a commission of Mars and Venus, so, um… I’ll probably see you later.’

As Gabriele packed up his stuff, Nicolò climbed off the table, rolling his shoulders. He accepted a tunic Vincenzo handed him, and, thankfully, covered himself before sauntering over to Yusuf.

‘Was it that obvious I’d never done it before?’ he asked.

Yusuf laughed. ‘Not at all. You must seemed a bit nervous, is all. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have commented.’

‘I’ve heard worse in my time,’ he said. He cocked his head from left to right, clearly relieved after so long in the same position. When he tilted his head back, Yusuf’s eyes nearly popped from his head at the sliver of taut, shiny skin that stretched almost from ear to ear below Nicolò’s jaw. Whatever wound it had been, it had healed beautifully, but… Well, Yusuf knew from experience that life faded very quickly once that part of the throat was cut.

Noticing his stare, Nicolò reached for his throat, his fingers stroking over the scar. ‘It wasn’t as bad as it looks.’

‘Clearly, as evidenced by the fact you’re still alive,’ Yusuf said.

Vincenzo poured himself a glass of wine. ‘What did you do, get caught with someone’s wife?’

‘I was a priest at the time, actually,’ said Nicolò.

‘So? The Pope himself has more than enough mistresses.’

‘Yes, well… I don’t.’

‘If you’re looking for one, I know some lovely ladies,’ said Vincenzo. ‘Some of them not even married.’

‘Vincenzo,’ said Yusuf, ignoring the sense of familiarity that spread through him. ‘That’s enough. Is there anything we can do to make the posing more comfortable for you? We sometimes get complaints it can be a bit monotonous.’

Vincenzo nodded, and held up his finger as if he’d found the answer. ‘We’ll change the pose. Mars Victor. Let me find you a standard…’

As Vincenzo disappeared to find the prop, Yusuf became painfully aware that he was alone with Nicolò. Those eyes brought back some of his old poetry, written, he realised with nostalgia, about another Nicolò. _I long to bathe in your eyes, cleanse myself through the reflection in your sight. Your love burns away my imperfections, and what is left is the purest soul. All for you._

‘I know I can’t talk while posing,’ Nicolò said, breaking through the reverie. ‘But perhaps you could? Tell me stories?’

‘Oh, don’t say that.’ Vincenzo returned from the back, holding a long pole, which he handed to Nicolò. ‘Yusuf fancies himself a bit of a poet. You’ll believe in eternal love and destiny before you know it.’

Nicolò didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to, with eyes so eloquent. Yusuf’s heart beat wildly against his chest, and he had to remind himself that this was not Nicolò from Seville. Just someone who shared his mannerisms, the mole on his cheek, that quiet intensity like he had oceans inside him that remained to be discovered.

‘I might bore you with some poetry,’ he said. ‘Now you’ve invited me.’

‘Poetry never bores me.’

‘That’s tonight’s entertainment sorted then!’ said Vincenzo. ‘Shall we get back to work? Without the tunic, please,’ he added, when Nicky returned to the table. ‘Muscle definition is key in this stance.’

With a glance at Yusuf, Nicolò pulled the clothes over his head and took the pose of a victorious Mars. No longer turned away in a downcast position of death, the nobility of his features and intensity of his gaze made Yusuf’s fingers tremble.

He flexed his muscles. He needed to get a grip.

He made the mistake of looking directly at their model, and dropped his pencil. As he bent down to pick it up, Nicolò said: ‘I thought I’d been promised poetry?’

‘Of course, of course…’ He flexed his fingers again and set his hand to the paper. But all that came to him was the last night he’d seen Nicolò, and the Arabic poem he’d been so proud of that night flowed in easy Florentine dialect:

> _My lover asks me:  
>  __‘What is the difference between me and the sky?’_  
>  _The difference, my love,  
>  __Is that when you laugh  
>  __I forget about the sky_.

‘That’s nice,’ said Vincenzo breezily. ‘Weird, but nice.’

He chuckled, looking at the paper in front of him, not Nicolò, not Nicolò, _not Nicolò_. ‘Thanks.’

‘It’s beautiful,’ came the voice from behind his easel. ‘It reminds me of an Arabic poem.’

‘You know Arabic poetry?’ Vincenzo asked.

‘I lived in Spain for a while. Speaking Arabic makes life in the south a lot easier.’

Vincenzo raised his eyebrows and started another sketch. ‘Not for much longer, if Ferdinand and Isabella have any say in it.’

Yusuf couldn’t postpone it any further, and looked at the model again. He wanted to look at the slope of his shoulders, the way the muscles in his right arm bulged at he held up the standard, but he looked straight into Nicolò’s face. He blinked and licked his lips, feeling like he got caught staring. ‘What poet was that? I might have heard of him.’

‘Yusuf, son of Ibrahim,’ said Nicolò. ‘He’s not very famous, I think, but he wrote some beautiful verses.’

‘Do Saracens only have three names?’ asked Vincenzo with a shake of his head. ‘I swear they’re all called Yusuf, Ibrahim, or Mohammed. What’s up with that, Yusuf?’

‘Every other man in Rome is called Luca,’ he responded absent-mindedly.

How on earth, _how on earth_ , had this Genoese priest heard his poetry? Had - was he actually related to his Nicolò, and had the family passed it down through the generations? What the…

Unless he imagined it. But he _had_ written those lines, hadn’t he? Or did he just remember hearing them once, ages ago? It was all so far in the past, he couldn’t be certain. But, but, but…

It couldn’t be. Coincidences still existed. Even over three hundred years.

Yet no more poetry came to him, and he and Vincenzo worked in silence until Vincenzo announced the end of the session. As he packed up and Nicolò put on his tunic and the rest of his clothing again, Yusuf looked at the sketches he’d made. After centuries, he’d finally had an opportunity to capture those god-like features, but he just wasn’t certain if they were the same. They couldn’t be the same. Unless Nicolò was like him and Andromache. Unless he’d died from that cut throat, and come back.

It wasn’t impossible.

It could be Nicolò. _His_ Nicolò.

By the time Yusuf had returned to the world of the living, Vincenzo had paid Nicolò and waved his hand in goodbye, leaving them alone in the cellar. Both of them stared at each other for the briefest of moments, and then Nicolò bent down and began to blow out the candles.

‘A fire hazard, leaving them like this,’ he said.

‘Quite.’ Yusuf’s heart leaped into his throat. Were those features the ones he’d dreamed about throughout the centuries, or was this just another handsome man? He couldn’t tell. He couldn’t be sure.

Nicolò took one of the torches from the wall and came up to his easel. Standing there, the fire dancing over the planes of his cheekbones, he reminded Yusuf of someone else, someone he’d forgotten for ages: Nils, who’d been his companion on the one evening in Norway that he hadn’t felt cold and lonely.

‘Can I take a look?’ Nicolò asked.

Yusuf nodded and stepped back. ‘Of course. It’s your face.’

‘It’s your art.’ But he moved with eagerness, joining Yusuf’s side. He picked up the final sketch, a close-up of his face down to the roundness of his shoulders, and studied it with nothing less than wonder. ‘Is that what I look like?’

‘It is.’

‘I’m not that bad looking, huh?’ he laughed.

 _When you laugh, I forget the sky_. Yusuf remembered the moment that had inspired that line, when Nicolò had lost a bet about Yusuf’s ability to compose twenty stanzas about a hedgehog. Was this the same man?

‘Artists are unreliable mirrors,’ said Yusuf. ‘Like poets and lovers.’

‘ _The only mirror I need are my lover’s eyes, for they reflect the best of my soul_ ,’ said Nicolò, in a heavily accented Arabic that hit Yusuf in the gut. Nicolò got the metre and the emphasis all wrong, but that was a line of poetry Yusuf definitely remembered composing, seated by the river at dawn after a night of stargazing.

They locked eyes. The blue of Nicolò’s irises had ceded almost entirely to the depth of his pupils. Nicolò of Seville or not, Yusuf saw his own desire written all over the other’s face for an instant, and then their lips met.

Bodies crashing into each other, hungry hands snaked around waists, up shirts, and grasped whatever they could reach. Suddenly, Yusuf found himself pinned against the wall, his chest pressed as close to Nicolò’s as possible, and he gasped for breath when Nicolò’s mouth moved away from his and trailed a path of kisses down his jaw, onto his neck. A hint of stubble grazed his skin, and Yusuf twisted his fingers through Nicolò’s hair to urge him on.

‘I’ve missed you,’ Nicolò whispered, pressing his lips against the skin just under Yusuf’s ear. His voice was hoarse, his accent so thick as to be incomprehensible to anyone who hadn’t lived in Genoa, and Yusuf knew.

It was his Nicolò.

He cupped Nicolò’s face in both his hands, kissing his mouth, his cheeks, his jaw, anything he could reach. ‘I’ve missed you too, _habibi_ ,’ he said. ‘I thought you were –’

‘And I thought –’

They paused, foreheads resting against each other, both frozen in their laughter. Yusuf brushed Nicolò’s hair away from his face, drinking it all in.

It was him. And he remembered. One summer love, and here they were.

‘Did we waste three hundred years?’ Yusuf asked.

‘It doesn’t matter if we’ve found each other.’ Nicolò kissed him again, hard, trying to make up for the centuries in between. Whatever had happened since then, Yusuf thought, it had given Nicolò some situational awareness, praise be.

When Yusuf broke away for some air, he noticed the beard-burn spreading over Nicolò’s chin and cheeks. Breathing heavily, he waited for the rash to fade away, small wounds like that taking mere seconds, but in the dusky atelier he couldn’t tell for certain, and then they were kissing again, and it didn’t matter.

He tugged at Nicolò’s tunic, pulled it over his head, relished the skin underneath. It was cold after being exposed for so long, but Yusuf’s hands would soon heat it through and through. He traced his fingers over Nicolò’s back, remembering exactly what muscles moved under him, having drawn them so lovingly for the past few hours. Suddenly, he found his own clothes discarded as well. His lover’s lips darted over his neck, to his shoulder, teeth scraping over his collarbone. He remembered that eagerness mixed with cold, and chuckled.

‘You’re Nils,’ he said, closing his eyes and resting his head against the wall. ‘We met in Trondheim. Do you remember?’

Nicolò raised his head, and Yusuf kissed him before he could answer. ‘Of course I remember.’ He hesitated, but then added, ‘Even at my age, you don’t forget your first kiss.’

‘Oh Nico.’ Yusuf laughed, his whole chest shaking with it. ‘Was I really? That was nearly a century after we met. Surely, surely, surely…’

But he shook his head. ‘Like I said, I used to be a priest. And then, of course, no one could live up to you…’

‘Flatterer.’

They laughed again, Nicolò throwing his head back, teeth glinting in the torchlight.

That was when Yusuf saw.

And he realised that Nicolò was not, in fact, like him.


	8. Outside Aleppo, 1085

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's that?  
> Aleppo, 1085? What happened in Rome?  
> You'll find out soon enough. In the meantime... 'Eyebrows' is a challenge where, if someone makes a preposterous claim, you dare them to Eyebrows. If it turns out to be true, the challenger shaves off their eyebrows; if it turns out to be untrue, the boaster shaves off theirs.

Andromache grabbed onto Lykon’s shoulder. It was the only thing that kept her from collapsing with laughter. Every time she opened her eyes, thinking she’d overcome it, that she was fine, the sight of Quýnh’s eyebrowless face set her off again.

‘It’s not _that_ funny,’ Quýnh said. ‘They’ll grow back.’

Lykon pulled Andromache upright, his smile as much in amusement at Andromache as Quýnh. ‘No, it is that funny.’

‘You look… You look…’ Andromache waved her hand in front of her face, as if that might calm her down. It didn’t, and she burst into another round of giggles that stole her words.

Quýnh folded her arms in front of her chest. ‘Yes, Andromache?’

‘You look _so_ surprised,’ she eventually managed. ‘Just absolutely baffled. No, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh –’

‘She does,’ Lykon interjected, and Andromache acknowledged his words with a shrug.

‘I can’t _not_ laugh. I’m sorry, my love. I’m sorry.’

‘She’s not,’ said Lykon.

‘Whose side are you even on?’ Andromache asked, as she wiped away the tears.

‘We’re all on the same side tonight.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ Quýnh muttered darkly, fingering the bone above her eyes where her eyebrows used to be. ‘Guess that’s the last time I’ll play Eyebrows with either of you.’

‘At least you don’t have to see it,’ said Lykon. ‘That’s one perk of not having a reflection, right?’

‘Oh shut –’

The horn rang.

The three immortals froze. Even after centuries by each other’s side, the start of battle always made the remaining time seem too short. Jaw clenched, Andromache watched as Quýnh put on her helmet, the jaw protectors stopping sufficiently far back to leave her deadliest weapon free: her teeth. Lykon, trusting in his sword and healing abilities, clutched his spear.

Andromache slipped one hand into Lykon’s, the other into Quýnh’s, and squeezed hard. ‘See you on the other side.’

‘Looking forward to it,’ said Lykon. He winked, his beaming smile filled with the assurance of the deathless, and they set off for the enemy camp.

*******

She should have watched his back.

That was her _job_.

But in the rush of victory, she had forgotten.

Lykon called her name, and she had turned around before the final syllable had escaped his lips. Grabbing her axe tightly, she raised her arm in attack and ran back to him. The burly figure who had overtaken her friend looked up, his mouth smeared with blood that dripped down from his chin, and Andromache noticed the angry tear in Lykon’s neck, spilling and flowing and gushing with blood.

He would heal; she would look after the attacker.

So the other side had learnt of the Undead as well, she thought, as the assailant leaped away from Lykon and bared his fangs at her. Well, they would see about that.

Whoever this attacker was, wherever he’d come from, Andromache would take care of him swiftly. Their fight was over before it began. Fuelled by her anger, Andromache’s axe battered the opponent until he barely had the strength to stumble backwards and die. The final blow of her labrys severed the head from the body, and she was done. The adrenaline rushed through her, and breathing heavily, she surveyed the battlefield. That was the last one. They were done for tonight.

They had won.

Quýnh’s piercing cry put an end to that.

‘Andromache! Andromache, help me!’

She turned around. Quýnh bent over Lykon’s body, her hands pressed to his neck, her beautiful eyes wide with a fear Andromache had never seen before. Andromache dashed over, sliding to Lykon’s side, noting too late that the sand under her knees had gone dark and wet.

‘Why won’t it stop?’ Quýnh’s voice was shrill, and she pushed even harder, but even so the blood flowed on.

Andromache’s insides turned to ice, and she placed her hands over Quýnh’s. Warm liquid spread over her fingers. ‘This can’t be happening,’ she whispered, scanning Lykon’s eyes for a sign that he was healing. That he would be all right.

His teeth were stained dark, blood trickling from the side of his mouth. His entire body shook, when he should have healed by now. He should have healed.

‘Lykon…’

‘It’s their v-venom.’ The words struggled to come out, choked by his death. ‘I can feel it spreading, it’s…’

‘Venom.’ Quýnh lifted her eyes to Andromache. But her face didn’t shine with the same fear Andromache felt; instead, hope flashed in her eyes, as she lowered her head to Lykon’s neck and did what Andromache had seen her do to herself and her victims so many times.

The blood didn’t stop.

‘No, no, heal,’ Quýnh said, the strands of her hair clinging to her face, thickened with Lykon’s life, as she tried again. ‘Heal, Lykon, it works on mortals, it must work on you, please, please…’

He twisted his head away from her, flinching. ‘It hurts –’

‘I’m helping you.’

‘It hurts, it…’

‘Stop it!’ Andromache pushed Quýnh aside, pressing her hands to Lykon’s neck. But the blood wasn’t gushing with the same force as before. Andromache’s heart lifted for just a moment, a brief, incalculable moment of hope in which she believed Lykon was healing after all, and then his eyes glazed over.

‘No. No, no, no!’

Her hands were everywhere. At his neck, trying to push the life back in, his chest, waiting to hear his heartbeat, his face, cradling those cheeks that were meant to smile off any injury. She left angry red stripes all over him, like the war paint they used to don, her fingerprints turning crusty as the blood dried.

‘Lykon, come back to me,’ Andromache urged, shaking his deathless corpse. She stared at the wounds, willing them to behave now that he’d died and heal now that they’d made their point. The torn skin, ragged where the teeth had left their mark, kept showcasing the tender pinkness inside. Why wouldn’t it close? Why –

She looked up at Quýnh, whose mouth and jaw were caked with Lykon’s blood, her fangs slowly retracting inwards again.

 _The venom_ , she realised. The venom didn’t heal them. It killed them.

‘Is he…?’ Quýnh asked.

‘Lykon is dead.’ Andromache let out a long, deep breath that felt as if it had pressed on her lungs for centuries. She fell back into the mud, her legs shaking too badly to carry her. She buried her fingers in her hair, clutching at her scalp, hoping the pain would bring her back into the real world, where Lykon rose and laughingly told her he hadn’t meant to scare her.

Quýnh’s chin trembled as she closed Lykon’s eyes. ‘How?’

‘Your kind killed him,’ Andromache said.

The words, once spoken, hung between them like a sword dangling from the thinnest, most fraying piece of string. A careless breath would snap it.

Quýnh tightened her jaw, her eyes glinting. ‘My kind?’ she asked. ‘ _My_ kind? I tried to save him –’

‘Your venom only made it worse. We could have patched him up, that wound wasn’t mortal –’

Quýnh didn’t wait for the accusation to finish, launching into her own defence, as both women yelled at and over each other. ‘He would have bled out if I hadn’t –’

‘He died all the same and he said – didn’t you hear that he said how it hurt? And it didn’t stop you –’

‘– stopped _thousands_ from dying this way, and now you expect me to feel guilty? How was I supposed to know –’

Andromache cut the string.

‘Lykon is _dead_ because of you!’ she screamed, her vision blurry from her tears, as the reality pumped through her mind. _Lykon is dead Lykon is dead lykon is dead lykonisdead._ ‘I could have saved him!’

Quýnh raised herself to her full height and stared down at the two immortals. ‘You could not, Andromache. You’re deluding yourself.’ Her nostrils flared, and her head snapped to the east. Andromache followed her gaze: the blush of grey at the end of night’s blackness, warning Quýnh that her time had ended.

‘You’d better go,’ Andromache said. Even she was shocked by the hatred that dripped from her voice. ‘Your kind doesn’t last long in the light of day, does it?’

‘Andromache. Don’t do this.’

Andromache turned away from her. Instead, she looked upon Lykon’s face for the last time. His bloodied teeth would never flash her a smile again. A silent sob went through her when she realised his eyes were closed for her forever already, that Quýnh had stolen even that from her.

She slowly pushed up Lykon’s chin, closing his mouth before the rigor mortis froze him in fear forever. So many years she’d taken his presence for granted, and now he was gone.

Just like that.

She wiped her nose with the back of her hand. She should have looked after him, and she hadn’t.

All around her, the remaining soldiers began clearing up. Identifying their fallen comrades, looting their enemies, examining their own wounds. Everything looked worse in the light. Andromache waited, still as a statue save for her tears, as dawn stretched her rays over Lykon.

It had been so long since she’d said goodbye to anyone. Centuries had passed in which she’d only needed Lykon and Quýnh and they needed her, and everybody else had faded into the clouds of time. And now they were both gone, and she remembered the sorrow that came with mortal love, and she was alone again.

Andromache the Scythian grabbed her labrys, and set off towards the sun.


	9. Rome, 1484

‘Flatterer.’

Yusuf looked so happy, his dark eyes shining with that sunlight that he took everywhere with him, and that he now lavished upon _him_. Its warmth spread through every fibre of Nicolò’s body. He couldn’t remember ever feeling this known, this worthy, this loved.

Unable to contain his happiness in smiles alone, he laughed. The moment seemed to last forever: him, Yusuf, happy, together, _finally_. He didn’t notice the change that came over Yusuf’s face until it was already too late, and Yusuf’s soul-warming eyes had cooled.

Nicolò’s laughter froze. ‘Yusuf? What’s wrong?’

Centuries of loneliness warned him of the cause: he was too intense, too eager, too devout. Nothing had prepared him for the actual answer.

‘You’re Undead,’ Yusuf said.

‘I… yes.’ He didn’t understand, but watching Yusuf’s eyes dart over his face, it dawned on him that something had gone even worse than he’d feared. ‘You’re not?’

Yusuf shook his head.

Yusuf, whose cheeks bore the kisses of the sun. Yusuf, whose chest heaved with his breathing. Yusuf, whose veins pulsed with the blood coursing through.

Yusuf, who was not like him.

Nicolò opened his mouth, but didn’t know what to say. His hands still rested on Yusuf’s shoulders, and neither of them moved away. The warmth of Yusuf’s living body burnt Nicolò’s fingers with accusation: how could he not have realised?

‘You’re Undead,’ Yusuf repeated, lifting his fingers to Nicolò’s neck, feeling for a pulse. When he found none, he trailed along the scar of the wound that should have killed him. ‘Since when? How? How can you – ’

‘I was dying,’ Nicolò said. The words sounded like an apology. He rushed ahead, hoping he could justify his current state somehow, do something to make that sheen over Yusuf’s eyes disappear. ‘I was bleeding out. Quýhn tried to save me, but I was too close to death already. The next day, I woke up like this. But you – how are you – ’

He remembered the story Quýnh had told him once, ages ago, of Andromache the Scythian and Lykon the Brave. There were other immortals out there, who still bore all the marks of life, but regenerated whenever they were wounded, even when they died. Immortals whose only purpose it was to wipe out the Undead and save humanity from their danger.

‘Oh.’

‘Yeah,’ Yusuf said. ‘Oh.’

Like a vase falling to the floor and breaking into a thousand fragments, each worth less than the other, all of it happening in the blink of an eye but playing out so slowly, like the world had paused, Nicolò’s joy shattered.

He staggered backwards, unable to bear the disgust building in Yusuf’s face. Disgust aimed at him, at what he was, what he’d done, what he would have to keep doing to stay alive. Disgust that had washed over him for centuries, but for one wonderful moment had been held back by the promise of Yusuf’s love.

Yusuf reached for his dagger, resting his hand on the hilt. Next to it, another weapon dangled from a scabbard, and Nicolò recognised the wooden stakes Quýnh had warned him about.

Neither of them moved.

‘How many?’ Yusuf asked, after an interminable silence.

‘How many what?’

‘How many innocent people have you killed?’

Nicolò didn’t answer. How to count those who’d died by his hands? Did the Plague victims count, if he had ended their suffering a few hours earlier than God had intended? Did the count include those he’d killed in self-defence? Would Yusuf want to hear about all those people, _all those people_ that he’d slain as a mortal in Jerusalem? In one way or another, he was responsible for hundreds, if not thousands of hastened deaths.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

Yusuf’s knuckles whitened around the heft. His hands had stopped shaking. ‘Get out.’

‘Yusuf, I –’

‘I said, _get out!_ ’ He drew his knife, holding it by his side, ready to strike. ‘Get out before I do what I should have done a long time ago.’

For a split second, Nicolò considered letting him.

Now Yusuf had seen him for the monster he truly was, instead of the poetry-reading, adoring figure he’d pretended to be, he could not help the feeling that the world would be better off without him. If even such devotion could crumble into hatred, what was left for him?

But as she had saved him before, so Quýnh stepped in again. Nicolò might be a demonic creature of the night, but Quýnh would miss him. And in time, she would try to find another companion, and banish them into the shadows.

‘GO!’ Yusuf shouted, lunging at him and pushing him towards the stairs. ‘Go, go, _go_ , you stupid – you – _go!_ ’

Nicolò scrambled out, up the stairs, into the night time streets of Rome.

The eternal city was still awake. Skirting past Trajan’s column, through the alleys that hunched so close together that only a slither of the stars was visible above his head, Nicolò ran as far as his legs would take him. With every turn, he hoped he could leave the memory of Yusuf’s disappointment behind. But those eyes had been branded into his mind.

He’d always suspected he was unworthy. But small moments had made him doubt: Quýnh’s smile when he massaged her feet after a long walk, the relief on a traveller’s face when he assured them he was a priest and would walk them home safely, the words Yusuf had written for him centuries ago that had cloaked him in love and tenderness.

All of that had been nothing but smoke and mirrors. Tonight, Yusuf had shown him what he looked like, what hid beneath his deceitful exterior.

He skidded to a halt in front of San Paolo fuori le mura. Where the rest of Rome balked at the idea of quieting down at night, the holy men of the basilica had retired. The black outline of God’s house loomed tall and threatening. Nicolò craned his neck to take it all in.

Nearly four hundred years since he had lost stepped inside a church. Gone for confession. Accepted the host. Not that he hadn’t tried; after the sun had set on his first Undead day, he’d rushed for the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, planning to bathe himself in holy water if he had to, if only it would get him back to normal.

He swallowed and looked down at his body. His earthly prison, cutting him off from God’s love, which only so recently had burnt with love and happiness. It felt heavier than ever, weighed down by his repentance, and yet it wasn’t enough to open the gaping jaws of the underworld and swallow him whole.

As he approached the steps to the entrance, that familiar heat met him before he could get close. Gritting his teeth, closing his eyes, Nicolò pushed forward, urging head-first towards the walls. If only he could get through, not all would be lost.

But God did not want him there.

No matter how he tried, Nicolò could not get through the layers and layers of divine protection that separated him from the sacred ground inside.

Predating any conception of Purgatory, he knew what this meant. He was cut off from the expiation by fire, and thereby cut off from the one path that might lead him back to God. All that awaited him were the flames of Hell.

Eventually, he collapsed on the first of the steps. Holding his head in his hands, he waited for sunrise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Listen, I am a sucker for CatholicGuilt!Nicky. And what better place to despair than the Holy City?  
> Back to your regularly scheduled idiots in the next chapter, I promise.


	10. Rome, 1484; Florence, 1495

The city’s bells rang for lauds. Nicolò raised his head, picturing the brothers inside whose days had just commenced. As they praised the Lord through song, the sun would rise, breaking through the stained glass windows with His light.

From his position on the steps, Nicolò could not yet see the dawn. He stared at the east, waiting for the dark blue to grow pale enough to hide the stars. For Dante, two hundred years ago, that promise of day had been the end of his time in Hell. For him, it would only be the start of eternal torment.

He folded his hands together to try and stop them from shaking. He’d died without confession the first time, secure in the spiritual benefits Urban had promised the crusaders. That protection would do him no good now.

‘ _Pater noster, qui es in celis_ ,’ he whispered, as his insides curled up in fear.

He was going to Hell.

As unnatural as a demon, as devoid of God as Lucifer after the fall, Nicolò was going to Hell to burn forever.

Still, he continued the prayer. ‘ _Sanctificetur nomen tuum. Adveniat regnum tuum._ ’

He’d be released of this earthly prison. No longer would he have to feed upon God’s children to stay alive himself. As had been warned in Leviticus: ‘You must not eat the blood of any creature, because the life of every creature is its blood; anyone who eats it must be cut off.’

He had been cut off for so long.

His fingers were laced so tightly, he couldn’t feel the tips any more. _Thy will be done_ , he prayed, as the sapphire shimmer over the rooftops banished the night. It was better like this. It was better like this, it was -

_You will burn forever._

He leaped up, blinking away his tears. His heart sank with disappointment. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t do God’s work the way Yusuf could and rid the earth of demons like him. The fear of God’s wrath was great; but the fear of its imminence was greater still.

Alone, unworthy, and deathless, Nicolò left the basilica behind him and returned to Quýnh.

*******

**Florence, 1495**

‘Nicolò, look! I’ve found your twin! Don’t they look exactly alike?’ Quýnh beamed at the stranger next to her and beckoned Nicolò to come closer. The Piazza della Signoria bustled with people, both real and marble, and tonight’s hunt would be easy. The feast of San Giovanni would ensure more than enough revellers eager for an encounter in the shadows; their addled minds would barely register the bite when it came, and afterwards the memory would fade more quickly than the puncture wounds in their neck.

Nicolò wove through the crowd, until he saw the statue Quýnh meant.

‘Is that what I look like?’ he asked. It had been a few years since he’d seen his features in Yusuf’s sketches, and even now he tried not to think about that night. His stomach burnt in shame and misery at the mere suggestion.

Quýnh nodded, as did the woman next to her.

‘It’s incredible,’ the woman said, looking from Nicolò to the statue. ‘Did you model for this?’

‘No,’ he said, because he hadn’t, although the pose looked familiar. He’d lain like that for hours as the dying hero, cursing the position that left him staring at the wall instead of at the artists. He moved closer and examined the figure. A pained frown, exhausted arm muscles, and a set of wings, broken and twisted like a dove after it had been grabbed by a hawk. ‘Who’s it by?’

‘This travelling artist, Giuseppe something,’ said the woman. ‘They unveiled it last week an he left almost immediately after. Very handsome,’ she added to Quýnh. ‘His smile - oh, I went weak at the knees, let me tell you!’

Nicolò could imagine.

‘It’s a shame we missed it,’ Quýnh said. ‘Does it have a name, this piece?’

‘The fallen angel.’

Quýnh grinned and nudged Nicolò with her elbow. ‘Sounds about right.’

But he didn’t smile back, and she must have picked up something in his demeanour, because she turned away from him and chatted some more to the woman, leaving Nicolò alone with the statue. He reached out, brushing over the marble that was even paler and colder than he. Yusuf’s hands had crafted this. Spent hours, if not days, chiselling and smoothing and perfecting until he had recreated Nicolò’s pose in the cellar.

This wasn’t a labour of hatred.

‘Artists are unreliable mirrors,’ Yusuf had once said. But the statue didn’t show Nicolò. It showed Yusuf.

A knot unwound in Nicolò’s chest. Perhaps all was not lost.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As for the next chapter, if anyone wants to get a hint of the theme, you can google 'Moretta'.


	11. Venice, 1724

Yusuf cocked his head, wondering if there was any way to be nice about this situation. In the end, even his poet’s tongue could only utter the truth: ‘That’s really unsettling.’

‘Isn’t it just?’ Andromache’s voice sounded completely different. As it would, Yusuf thought, considering she was biting down on a button in order to keep her _moretta_ in place. The black leather mask, with just two openings for her green eyes and a little mound for her nose, formed a perfect circle over her face, kept in place just by the force of her jaw. But it did what Andromache wanted: no one would recognise her like this.

He averted his eyes, made too uncomfortable by the featureless circle where her face should be. Tying his own white _bauta_ mask until it stayed secure even when he moved his head, he could not help but wonder at the wisdom of their plan for tonight.

‘So what are we trying achieve?’ he asked, when Andromache had taken off her mask again and held it lightly in her hand. ‘We go into this vampire masquerade, and then we…? What, kill them all in front of the mortals?’

‘There will be far too many of them,’ she said. ‘No, tonight is about protecting the vulnerable. Get as many mortals out there as possible _before_ they get hurt, only attack the Undead if they threaten to drink their victims to death. And then we remember as many faces as possible and hunt them down one by one afterwards.’

He waited for her to point out the obvious flaw in the plan. When she didn’t, he prompted, ‘We remember as many faces as we can. At a masked ball. Where the majority of attendees will be mortals.’

‘Exactly.’ She handed him his feather-tipped hat with a smile. ‘A little challenge. C’mon. It’s going to be fun.’

When they stepped outside, Yusuf was glad for his hat and the cape that came along with it. Venice in February was _freezing_ , the mist rolling in over the lagoon doing the temperatures no favours. Add to that the chilling sight of the others out on the street, all with faces at least partially covered by carnival masks, and Yusuf began to understand why the Undead celebrated in this particular city.

He glanced to his side and nearly had a heart-attack from the eyes watching him through that circle of blackness, surrounded by a ring of white skin. Andromache chuckled, the sound coming out strangely now she couldn’t open her teeth.

‘Scaredy cat,’ she said.

‘It’s really creepy.’

On a distant bridge, he saw two more eclipse-like faces, both hovering over richly dressed bodies. They reached the gondola mooring at the same time, and Yusuf noticed that they were uncannily tall: both of them towered almost three inches over him.

The blonde-haired woman in the pair asked, ‘Dandolo’s?’

‘That very one,’ he said.

‘We can share a gondola then.’

 _What joy_ , he thought, stepping a tad closer to Andromache. His stomach churned with discomfort, but he was fairly sure that wasn’t due to the proximity of any Undead. These masks just unnerved him.

He rubbed his hands over his arms for warmth, hopping from one foot to the other, while the women seemed perfectly happy just to stand there like creepy creeps. When a _gondoliere_ did glide through the black waters of the canal, Yusuf thanked the Lord that at least someone wasn’t wearing a mask tonight.

‘We need to go to Palazzo Dandolo,’ he said, as he held out his arm for the ladies to cling onto while they stepped into the barge. The movement explained something about their uncanny looks: their shoes were more than a foot tall, hidden underneath their voluminous skirts until they flashed their ankles at him. Andromache scorned both his and the _gondoliere_ _’_ s offer for help, and leaped into the gondola. Although her skirts might have been impractical, her shoes were always ready for a fight.

Yusuf embarked last, taking a seat by the edge. As the boat set off towards the Gran Canale, swaying gently from side to side, Yusuf was hit by a wave of wonder for the city that spread out on either side of him. The rows of palazzi along the river glowed with the lights of the revelry inside, the sloshing water reflecting the windows like man-made moons. A couple of other _gondole_ braved the main waterway of Venice, some of them the fancy ones with little curtained cabins built on them, others pushed forward by _gondolieri_ in the liveries of the great families of the Golden Book. In all his years on this earth, Yusuf had never seen anything so ethereal, so on the borders between the water and the heavens, as the Most Serene Republic.

They crossed the Gran Canale, and disappeared into one of the many waterways that led deeper into the city. Away from the major palazzi, dark buildings closed in around them; had it not been for the lantern at the gondola’s prow, they would have slid through perfect night.

The _gondoliere_ knew these canals like the back of his hand, and soon the fiery torches of the Dandolo’s private mooring drew them closer. Two masked footmen stood ready, like ghostly ambassadors of death. The worst part of it, Yusuf decided, was that he couldn’t even tell if this was all an Undead thing or just a really strange choice made by normal Venetians.

He was last to leave, although the line into the house was closed by one of the footmen: one of them opened the water-facing door towards the grand entrance and pointed them up the stairs, whence music and laughter vied for prominence; the other hovered behind them, one eye on the mooring, one on the guests, as if ready to strike on either side at a moment’s notice.

Yusuf had to admit that Andromache fit right in. Tall, faceless, luxuriously fashionable, she looked like any posh Venetian woman wanting to escape scrutiny for the night. Little did the other guests know that her deep pockets were filled with stakes, knives, and a perfume bottle of Holy Water. As they scaled the marble stairs and caught sight of a group of masked, cloaked men, Yusuf noticed with some relief that he’d got the costume right, too. Now he just needed to find out if the Undead upheld different sartorial standards from the rest of the party.

As they stood in front of the large, double doors that led to the ballroom, Yusuf glanced to his side. ‘I won’t be able to find you in there once we split up.’

‘Should you need me, just call my name,’ she said. ‘If we fail to catch each other again, I’ll meet you on San Marco at dawn, all right?’

‘What if you need me?’

He could feel her smile even through the expressionless leather. ‘I’ll manage on my own.’

He tipped his hat at her and, taking a deep breath, set off into the crowd. His stomach burnt like he was fighting an ulcer, confirming what his eyes could not: he was surrounded by the Undead. Left, right, all around him, masked revellers celebrated the season, some showing nothing but their eyes, others revealing wolfish grins underneath their masks. Ironically, the room was hung with gilded mirrors, which might have been an easy way to spot his targets, but which now reflected endless masks and hats and feathers. Even most hands were covered up to the fingertips.

Remembering the purpose of tonight’s mission, Yusuf leaned against the wall between two windows, and started his search. He soon realised that this was harder than ever: the moment he thought he’d glimpsed elongated fangs or a mask without a reflection in the mirror, the dancers had swirled on and the suspect was once again lost. His frustration was only alleviated slightly by the food on offer. And in truth, after a few bite of squid-ink snacks sneaked in through the opening at the bottom of his mask, he was quite done with that flavour, too.

He cast his gaze over the dancers again, and then he noticed.

A tall man, leaning into a woman’s ear, his words making her eyes glint.

Either this was a romantic rendez-vous, or she was about to become dinner. Yusuf slid along the wall, careful not to pay too much attention to the exposed jaw underneath that mask, or the full lips, or indeed the mole on the cheek. He pretended not to catch the reflection of the candles in those lagoon-like eyes, and was pretty sure he could not imagine the shape of the nose underneath the beak of the mask. No, this was purely coincidental and Yusuf did not notice _at all_.

He followed the pair out of the ballroom. Whatever suggestion had been made to her, the girl seemed to embrace it, resting her gloved hand on his arm. When the man pushed open one of the doors, she strode in ahead of him, the bottom half of her dress swaying with each step.

Yusuf paused just before he reached the doorway and pressed himself against the wall, listening. The moment he heard the wet smacking of drunken kissing, he’d be out of there. But if his gut feeling had been correct…

‘Are you sure about this?’

Even with all his imagination, Yusuf couldn’t pretend not to recognise that voice. The hesitation, the underlying eagerness, the accent – he cursed internally.

From inside the room, the woman’s response came, breathy and excited: ‘Will it hurt?’

‘Only for a little bit, I promise.’

‘That’s a shame.’

Yusuf peeked around the corner. The couple stood at the centre of a sumptuous, if overly full, drawing room. She tilted her head to the side, pulling her hair away from her neck, her brown eyes darting to his face. The man, his back to Yusuf, brushed a stray strand away as he lowered his mouth into the hollow of her throat.

She gasped, her eyes popping open with shock, before letting out a low moan. Wrapping her arm around the man’s shoulders, she shut her eyes and pressed herself close. Yusuf watched, nailed to the ground, unable to name the fierce emotion that was lit within him.

He wanted to reach for this stake, but he couldn’t.

The woman threw her head back, her mouth slightly open, her lips quivering into an almost-smile, and then the man pulled away. Yusuf’s heart started racing as the woman grinned and brushed the man’s lips, her fingers coming back red with her own blood.

‘Is that it?’ she asked.

‘Any more and you’d faint. Come, let’s get you something to eat.’ He offered her his arm, and turned towards the door. For an instant, the blue eyes met Yusuf’s, and then Yusuf dashed back to the party.

He’d done his job, he reminded himself, bumping into people left, right, and centre. He was here to ensure nobody died. The woman was safe. His task there was done, time to find another Undead… He grabbed a drink from a passing waiter, the sparkling wine holding his attention for the first time in his life. Perhaps it would ease this sickening churning in his stomach.

But he knew he shouldn’t – not ever, and certainly not on a job – and placed it on one of the tables.

It didn’t matter if that was Nicolò. It had been more than two centuries since he’d got that man out of his system. Yes, it might have taken a large and ridiculously expensive block of marble, but once that statue was done, _he_ had been done. Done fantasising about those lips and eyes and the feeling of those hands in his hair. He was so done, in fact, that he could easily walk over to him and have a friendly chat. Easily.

He didn’t, but he could have without a problem.

Where was Andromache? He scanned the room, but so many of the women wore that creepy _moretta_ mask, she could have been anywhere.

Even Nicolò took some effort to find again, although only the top half of his face was hidden. He was chatting to the woman he’d – he’d – Yusuf didn’t know what the correct term for it was, and settled on a euphemism: the woman he’d had a tête-à-tête with. Two others had joined them. Their pallor could have been caused by death, or a lack of blood, or just the make-up Venetians loved at this time of year. Why, why, _why_ did Venice have such a creepy aesthetic around carnival? It made his job so much harder.

And that bloody Nicolò. Yusuf had forgotten how broad those shoulders were.

If Yusuf needed any reminder that Nicolò was a sworn enemy and godless creature of night – which he didn’t, because he knew this full well – the mirror behind the quartet told him: Nicolò was talking to three humans, all of their faces reflected in the glass. Nicolò was only visible through his clothes.

Despite all the other targets present that night, Yusuf kept an eye on Nicolò, watching as he laughed, spoke, danced a short waltz with his victim before escorting her to the mooring and getting her a gondola.

Yusuf waited for him to step inside as well, and follow her home for the second part of the night, but Nicolò just kissed the back of her hand and stepped back. This was good, because it meant the woman was safe. It was also bad, because it meant Yusuf’s undivided attention was still on potentially the least dangerous figure present tonight. And it was infuriating, because Yusuf could help but wonder what words they’d exchanged there.

He checked the ornate, gilded clock in the central hallway: it hadn’t even gone eleven yet. This party would go on for a long time.

It was time to focus on something else. He was here to find the Undead, keep their victims safe, and remember them for later. He already knew what Nicolò looked like, so all this was a wasted effort.

Right. That was settled then. He turned around to walk up the grand staircase again, when that damned voice rose behind him:

‘Yusuf?’


	12. Venice, 1724

Nicolò watched the gondola set off with relief. Although he’d taken care not to drink too much, he had the sneaking suspicion that Veronica would find someone else to recreate the rush with if she stayed. And that would not have ended well for her.

He nodded at the footmen and stepped back into the entrance hall. The masked figure halfway up the stairs – he’d seen him before, he thought, although it was difficult to tell with the mask hiding his entire face. In all likelihood, he was just imagining things. What were the odds, after two hundred years, of walking into _him_ now? Here?

The figure turned away and ascended further, his cloak sweeping behind him.

He could always try. If he was wrong – and he would be – then there’d have been a misunderstanding about identity at a masked ball. Hardly unimaginable. He opened his mouth, but the name got stuck in his throat, held back by Nicolò’s anticipation.

Only when he reminded himself of the odds, which were so, so, so small, did he manage: ‘Yusuf?’

The figure froze.

‘So it was you,’ Nicolò said, remembering the observer from earlier in the night. Part of him wished that he hadn’t known; the thought of Yusuf watching him at his most unnatural filled him with shame. But then, that was who he was. Yusuf had known that for ages now.

Yusuf twisted his head, so his mask looked down directly at Nicolò. From this angle, Nicolò couldn’t even see the eyes behind the sockets in the porcelain mask, but their scrutiny was unavoidable.

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Yusuf. His voice was cold, distant, and came over Nicolò like a torrent of icy rain.

He’d been so certain, after seeing the statue – had he been deluding himself? Or had the sight of him with Veronica crushed the little faith Yusuf had had in him? Perhaps it had happened slowly since they last met, Yusuf’s heart hardening while Nicolò, stupid Nicolò, kept picking at the wound just in case.

He clenched his jaw and nodded. At least Yusuf had been courteous enough to allow him a simple way out: ‘I must have mistaken you for someone else.’

‘Indeed you have. Good night.’

Nicolò waited until Yusuf had reached the top of the stairs and disappeared back into the party. Somewhere deep inside of him, that small flower of hope that had withstood two hundred years of doubt, died.

Yusuf didn’t care for him. Not anymore, not now he knew what Nicolò was, and Nicolò had deluded himself.

He sank onto the stairs, hands between his knees. Two centuries worth of hope, all come to nothing. The only thing that made it bearable was that he couldn’t quite encompass the enormity of it just yet.

He should get onto a gondola and leave. The music from the party banged against his ears. He’d fed. What else was there to do for him here? Quýnh wouldn’t miss him; she rarely came home after a masquerade, because she, unlike him, had the good sense not to pin all her hopes and dreams onto one person.

And the alternative of staying might lead him into Yusuf again. He couldn’t bear the thought of his rejection. Might as well salvage what was left of his pride.

He rose from the marble stairs, feeling as ancient as he was. He stepped outside, where one of the footmen nodded at him and assured him he’d get another gondola. Nicolò rested against the stuccoed wall, waiting. The waves lapped at the houses that ended straight onto the canal, doorways with and without steps opening straight onto the water. The city was the most impractical he’d ever seen. Bloody Venetians.

Eventually, a shiny black gondola arrived at the dock. Five partygoers stepped out, most of them with masks that left their teeth bare, and Nicolò sank into the boat. He took off his mask, which had pressed heavy on his nose all evening, and closed his eyes as the _gondoliere_ set off.

Footsteps beat against the wooden mooring. Nicolò prayed that, whoever it was, they had the patience to wait for their own gondola. The last thing he needed was small talk. But it turned out even worse than he’d imagined.

‘Wait! Wait!’

The _gondoliere_ paused. Nicolò twitched, looking over his shoulder, and knew what was about to happen possibly before Yusuf did. So when the immortal leaped from the mooring at the gondola, grabbing hold of the side –

‘ _Fuck_ , this is cold!’

The whole boat swayed to the left, as Yusuf tried to climb in, his legs in the icy water. Under loud cursing from the _gondoliere_ , Nicolò grabbed Yusuf by his arms and dragged him on board.

‘You idiot,’ the _gondoliere_ fumed. ‘You’ll freeze to death like this. You could have just waited.’

‘I didn’t know if you would let me.’ Yusuf, shaking all over, groaned. ‘I thought I could make it.’

‘You need to get out of those wet clothes,’ the _gondoliere_ said, as he continued on his way. ‘You’ll never get warm like this.’

‘I won’t get warm without my clothes, either!’

Nicolò had already untied his cloak from around his neck. ‘Come on, take them off, cover yourself with this.’ His hand brushed Yusuf’s hose, and he flinched at the coldness of the water dripping into the gondola. ‘Please.’

Encumbered by his shaking fingers, Yusuf stripped off his shoes and began to pull down his hose. His teeth were chattering so loudly that Nicolò could barely hear himself think, which was probably why he finished the job, removing the sodden wool far more swiftly than Yusuf could. Within seconds, he’d wrapped his cloak around Yusuf’s legs, tucking him in around his icy toes.

The _gondoliere_ shook his head. ‘Next time, just wait a second.’

Yusuf nodded, wrapping his arms around his chest and rubbing. ‘Next time, I’m moving somewhere warm.’

Nicolò chuckled. Holding the socks over the edge of the gondola, he began to wring them out. It was easier than looking at Yusuf’s masked figure, or thinking about what this meant. With the perseverance of the foolish, the trampled flower of hope decided it was in for another round.

‘So where are we going?’ asked Yusuf.

‘San Marco.’

‘That where you live?’

Nicolò gave the socks a final good twist and handed them back to Yusuf. ‘Yes.’

‘Fancy.’

‘So you’re travelling together?’ the _gondoliere_ asked. ‘You don’t need me to put in another stop?’

Yusuf didn’t respond. Instead, he reached for the back of his head and untied the knot of his mask, exposing his beautiful, lovely, warming face to the air. He’d changed his beard since that night in Rome, switching those thick curls for a sharp stubble that cut right under his cheekbones. Other than that, he was exactly as Nicolò remembered him. ‘What do you say, Nicolò?’

His heart leapt into his throat. Knowing he might be walking into a trap that could cost him his life, he knew the only answer he could give: ‘I’ve got some warm clothes at home. It’s not that far from the piazza.’

‘That’s settled then,’ said the _gondoliere_. ‘San Marco it is.’

Nicolò didn’t know what else to say. Any real questions – _have you forgiven me? Will you kill me? Where do we go from here?_ – seemed unsuitable in front of a chaperon. Fortunately, Yusuf had mastered the skill of small talk.

‘Been in Venice long?’ he said, from between clattering teeth.

‘A few weeks. You?’

‘Same. We were in Const - Istanbul before. It’s no good; my –’ He checked the _gondoliere_ , but he had taken on the disinterested face of the professional, ‘– my wife just spends all our money on baklava the moment we go east. She’d bankrupt us for those sweets.’

‘Baklava?’ Nicolò asked.

Something shifted in Yusuf’s face, his eyebrows rising with an emotion Nicolò couldn’t place. ‘It’s this pastry, filled with walnuts or almonds and honey. I suppose you’ve never…’

He shook his head. ‘Nope.’

‘Right. Right.’

Now they had some normal conversation going, Nicolò was eager to hold onto it. It might be the most honest he and Yusuf had ever been with each other. ‘Was she there tonight as well?’

‘Yeah, but you wouldn’t have recognised her. She wore one of those, what are they called. Those black masks that you have to bite on to keep in place. The _moretta_ ,’ he said. He began rubbing his hands over his legs, massaging his calves through the fabric of Nicolò’s cloak. ‘All these masks freak me out, to be honest. I prefer seeing people’s faces.’

‘You had no difficulty recognising me.’

Yusuf lifted his chin. The moonlight reflected in his eyes, making them shimmer. ‘Yeah. Funny how that works.’

The spell was broken when his teeth made themselves known again, and Nicolò reached over to Yusuf’s legs. ‘Let’s get the circulation back,’ he said, following Yusuf’s example in rubbing up and down. The chill of Yusuf’s skin pressed through the cloak, although by the time the gondola moored at the edge of Piazza San Marco, Yusuf insisted he could feel his toes again.

‘You are an idiot,’ Nicolò said, offering his arm to help Yusuf stumble back onto land. Legs still wrapped in Nicolò’s cloak, toes pressed into his sodden shoes but nothing else, hose scrunched together in Nicolò’s hands, Yusuf was a walking advertisement for reasons not to jump into the Venetian lagoon in February. Not that anyone other than those with guaranteed immortality would be stupid enough to consider such an act, Nicolò thought.

‘You could’ve just waited,’ he said, as he led Yusuf along the Doge’s palace, towards the grand Basilica.

Yusuf’s voice was so distorted by his shivering that it took Nicolò a moment to decipher what he’d said: ‘I didn’t know if you’d come back.’

‘Of course I would.’ He wished there were words stronger than that, but he had a suspicion Yusuf knew already. ‘Come, it’s not far from here.’

‘Are you always destined to know your way around cities better than I do?’

‘Hardly impressive when I’m taking us to my house.’

Yusuf shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if you knew the route to mine better, too. It’s near the church of Madonna dell’Orto. In case you were wondering.’

Nicolò hadn’t dared wonder. He certainly hadn’t expected Yusuf to tell him. Venice was a maze of streets and canals and dead ends, but he did know the route to that area fairly well. Yusuf hadn’t needed to share that information with him. But he had done it anyway.

‘Next time, can we meet in Egypt, please?’ Yusuf asked, his breath coming out in a little cloud. ‘Or Jordan. Or Ethiopia. Or Andalusia again. Just somewhere that isn’t this effing cold?’

‘I’ll do my best.’

‘Thanks.’

Eventually, they rounded a corner into a little courtyard. It held not one, but two little shrines to the Virgin Mary, as well as a well at the centre. Nicolò took out his set of keys, and welcomed Yusuf into his home. He led Yusuf up the wooden stairs to the first floor, which held two pitch black rooms. Things were clear as dusk for Nicolò, but he realised that might not be the case for his guest. ‘Can you see anything?’

‘Not exactly.’

He took Yusuf’s hand and guided him towards one of the two beds. ‘Take a seat there. There’s a blanket, I’ll get us some light.’ Scuffling around, he had soon turned on the oil lamp and placed it on the one table in the room. He became aware of the impression the room must create of him: it was Spartan: clean, soulless, empty. He wanted to bet Yusuf’s home carried the scent of spices and sunshine, the walls covered in his sketches, his laughter imprinted on the rooms.

‘It’s not much,’ he said, as if that explained things. ‘We move around a lot. Here, I’ve got some…’ He avoided Yusuf’s curious gaze, and reached into his trunk, pulling out a thick pair of hose.

‘Thanks.’ Yusuf unwrapped his legs from the cloak. They had dried, at least, even if his toes still had a frosty pallor.

Nicolò averted his eyes while Yusuf dressed, remembering with a flush of embarrassment the last time they’d met and he had been stark naked. He shifted his weight onto his other leg and wondered where to go. Quýnh’s bed? That seemed distant and awkward. Remain standing up? Like he was about to leave? No. Well. Maybe. How come none if this played out in any of the ways he’d imagined? He’d prepared for a thousand scenarios, but somehow ‘Yusuf almost freezes to death and needs to be wrapped up warm in bed after giving the cold shoulder at a fancy party’ had never been among them.

‘So,’ he said, swapping to his other leg, leaning against the wall.

Yusuf pulled his legs to his chest, covered by the blanket, and folded his arms around his knees. ‘So. Here we are.’

Almost six hundred years since they first met. More than two centuries since their last encounter. The first time they were in a room together with both of them knowing the truth. Or at least, that was what they thought.

Nicolò took a seat on the edge of his bed. ‘Where shall we start?’

**Author's Note:**

> Kind of supposed to be a silly fic, kind of eager to show Nicolò and Yusuf falling in love with each other in a variety of different places, missing former versions of each other, catching glimpses of past loves in poetry... Anyway, it's still v much in development, so if there's any particular time & location you'd like to see them in, do let me know!


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